


Beyond Redemption

by neversaydie



Series: My Church is not of Silver and Gold [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Dance, Anxiety, Bulimia, Documentaries, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Excessive Drinking, F/M, Journalism, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Panic Attacks, Self-Destruction, minor character illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:07:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 47,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5447657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bucky had first conceived of starting his own dance company, of finally escaping all the pressure of his old life for something new and exciting, this isn't exactly what he'd had in mind. </p><p>Domestic bliss is becoming a domestic nightmare, and the fame of a viral video isn't helping the pressure that's building up fast. But Bucky's dealt with worse, he and Steve can get through this together. </p><p>Right?</p><p>[sequel to Take Me to Church]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Icarus

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel to Take Me to Church is finally here! Please read that first, so this will make sense.

When Bucky had first conceived of starting his own dance company, of finally escaping all the pressure of his old life for something new and exciting, this isn't exactly what he'd had in mind.

"Christmas is coming up, I'm telling you we should put on the Nutcracker. Even a very limited run would drum up a lot of ticket money."

"I hear you, okay. I'm just—"

"We're not trying to pressure you, Bucky. We're really not." Coulson sighs delicately though his nose, sitting back in his chair like he has all the time in the world to discuss this. Which is a complete lie, of course, because if he wanted them to put on the Nutcracker he should have said something _weeks_ ago. "You don't necessarily have to take a principal role, all we need is your name on the poster to get people into the theatre."

"Uh, yeah, he does. Nobody's going to show up after the first performance if they find out they're seeing the _infamous_ Barnes play a mouse instead of a prince. Box office draw sitting right there, _hello_."

Unfortunately for everyone else involved, Tony Stark has decided to take an active interest in his Art Foundation's newest investment. The guy is unfailingly obnoxious to Bucky, showing up to meetings in his tailored suits that are always inexplicably rumpled as though he's slept in them, and he knows about as much about ballet as Coulson does. Which is precisely nothing.

And yet, he's technically partially Bucky's boss. Technically. Enough that Bucky has to sit there and be polite and not tell the guy he knows _fucking nothing_ about ballet, at least.

"You should have told us a while ago if you wanted a performance ready by mid-December." Bucky swerves the issue, shifting uncomfortably under the scrutiny of his business partner and trying to convince himself that the leather chairs creak for everyone, it's nothing to do with the three pounds he's been maintaining since last week. The fluorescent lights in the Stark Industries meeting rooms are always too bright for him, and today his head is starting to throb from more than just the content of the meeting.

"Do it modern, make it stripped-back and take out some numbers. Get artsy." Stark flaps his hand dismissively in a manner that clearly telegraphs _that's not my problem_. "Re-imagine it, or whatever."

Bucky rubs a hand over his weary eyes and tries not to groan aloud. He really doesn't need this shit today. He doesn't need this shit this _year_.

"The whole reason people go to see the Nutcracker at Christmas is because it _looks_ like Christmas, Mr Stark. It's also old-fashioned as hell and represents everything we made this company to stand against." He digs his thumbnail into his palm under the table, trying to maintain the careful calm he's affecting when he really wants to get the fuck out of there five minutes ago. Before this ridiculous bullshit came up.

"But all your people have performed it before, right? A bunch of times, probably. So it shouldn't be too hard to develop a new production."

"That's not—"

"I'll even throw some extra cash at you for costuming, no strings." Stark holds up his hands, as if throwing money at things is unquestionably the best way to fix them. "The kids' classes are great, it's been an awesome community initiative, or so Pepper tells me. But so many of the kids qualify for cheap lessons that it's not keeping the lights on."

"We were always going to start productions, but it's too short—"

Bucky doesn't even get the chance to speak up for himself, cut off and talked over _again_ by his business partner. This shit is getting old.

"Bucky, it's either put on the show or relax the criteria for the reduced-fee lessons. Half the kids will get their costs doubled." Bucky is starting to get fucking _furious_ with Coulson's tone, that too-reasonable calm that's just on the edge of patronising. He's also not exactly thrilled at being ambushed like this, especially since they've clearly discussed things without him and already made their decisions.

They _know_ Bucky's not going to let them put the class fees up when it would cost them their most promising young dancers. They've planned this so he doesn't have a choice about putting on some rushed hack-job of a Nutcracker production to take advantage of the season, just like every other dance company in the USA does in December.

He's _this close_ to losing it. The whole point of this company was supposed to be that nobody would be taking advantage of him anymore, and here he is right over the same barrel he's been riding his whole life.

"I don't see why you bothered setting up this meeting when you've already made all the decisions." Bucky digs his fingernail further into his skin and refuses to let his voice get unsteady because he's pissed. He won't look unstable or irrational over this, he won't allow himself to. "We're supposed to run this thing together."

"You don't have a lot of experience running a business yet, we're just trying to help keep things on track." Coulson still has that infuriating tone in his voice, and Bucky's starting to suspect that the only reason he'd agreed to come on board with the company is because of Bucky's new-found notoriety. Infamy will sell a lot of tickets, he knows that, but he wants to be more than a dancing monkey with his name on the poster.

"Yeah, we're all just playing to our strengths. You handle the creative side, let us do the boring business crap. It'd be stupid not to capitalise on your name right now." Stark is less tactful than Coulson, and Bucky has to strongly resist the urge to punch him when he pretty much dismisses him. He knows the guy well enough to know that this is him trying to be helpful, but his main concern is profit and not what the company has to go through to make it. "And the production doesn't have to open until like, December tenth. No pressure."

"No pressure." Bucky repeats hollowly, then abruptly pushes his chair back and stands up from the table. He grabs his folder with suggestions about expanding their community programme (apparently totally unneeded and not even touched on during the meeting) and stalks out of the room without a backwards glance at the fucking _traitors_ he does business with.

"Dancers. Are they all this moody?" He hears Tony grumble over his shoulder just before the door swings shut, and Bucky very nearly opens the door again to throw the folder at his stupid fat head. He manages to control himself, but only by ducking into the nearest artfully-placed alcove and letting his head _thunk_ heavily against the wall.

To say things have been stressful over the last six months is an understatement of epic proportions. The company took off unexpectedly quickly after it launched, helped in no small part by the fact that Bucky's fame suddenly jumped out of the dance world and into the mainstream at the same time.

A lot of dance performances end up on youtube, legally filmed or not, but not all of them have the talent or dramatic backstory of Bucky's performance to compel public interest. Add the fact it was his final performance and the rumours already swirling around him in the dance world, and it's not too surprising that the digital camera footage of him dancing to _Take Me to Church_ right before his fall went viral. The video racked up millions of hits and birthed a whole new world of pressure for Bucky to square his shoulders under. It's not like he gets recognised on the street, but dancing on _Ellen_ will do a lot for your professional profile.

Steve is proud of him. Bucky's not sure there's anything to be proud of. He hates the video, hates how gaunt and pale he looks under the stage lights, sickly and hollow like all the life had been leeched out of him and left a moving puppet behind. He hates how his expression contorts grotesquely and so openly displays all the pain that he'd spent his life hiding, just _there_ for anyone to see and comment on. Most of all he hates the way he looks at the end of the dance, when he can't even lift his head and hangs there, strings cut, for long seconds until someone closes the curtain and the whole thing is mercifully over.

It gives him nightmares, sometimes. He keeps that to himself though, because it would only add to the myths and rumours springing up around him and gathering speed all the time. He's just relieved that his medical records are private, because anyone and their mother knowing that he'd almost died, that he totally lost control of himself to an eating disorder… that would be too much to bear. That would be the straw that finally broke his back in two, and he shakes the thought off uneasily as he finally finds the strength to get the hell out of this building.

"Are you alright, Mr Barnes?" His new PA, the extremely tall, extremely muscular Scandinavian blond who Bucky definitely didn't hire for his organisational skills, is waiting in the lobby and falls into step with Bucky as they leave the building. A blast of cold air makes them shudder as soon as they hit the sidewalk, and Bucky sincerely regrets forgetting his thick jacket at the studio this afternoon.

"Please never call me that. It's Bucky, Thor." The guy's name is fucking _Thor_ , of course Bucky had to hire him. On top of the fact he looks like a hipster god as well as having an appropriate name, of course. "I'm fine. I think I'm just getting a migraine."

"Do you need me to clear your schedule?" All on the cloud, of course, because Bucky's never known somebody accidentally break his phone quite so many times as Thor. He tends to throw things when he's happy, for some reason. "You've got a magazine interview at five and then your appointment with Clint Barton at six-thirty."

"Uh… Cancel Clint, we need the interview." Barton will call him out on not keeping his appointments, Bucky knows that, but right now he'll take the disapproving email over the prospect of an extra hour in a brightly-lit room. "Guess I can announce our first production coming up, surprise the crap out of everyone."

"They decided without you?" Thor has been on the receiving end of a couple of rants about the management situation and he's a good listener, so he's already pretty clued-in to Bucky's rocky relationship with his business partners. "Are you sure you want me to cancel your appointment with Clint? I can—"

"It's fine, big guy. Thanks." Bucky pats him on the arm, comforted by the wall of steel that meets his brief touch. It reminds him of Steve, which always makes it a little easier to handle everything on a bad day. "You think we can schedule to meet the magazine guy in a bar? I need a drink."

"I'll call him now." He's already tapping at his phone screen with his giant, clumsy fingers, and Bucky would find it endearing if he had the energy. "You've got an hour free now."

"I'm gonna go home and change. Can you drop this stuff off at the office for me?" Bucky hands his folders over to Thor, who slips them into the oversized messenger bag he carries everywhere. The poor guy is essentially Bucky's handbag as well as his assistant, but he never complains. "Text me where the interview's happening and I'll meet you there."

"I'll grab some Advil on the way." Thor smiles, sunny and bright, and Bucky wonders vaguely if he's ever seen the guy frown. He's seen him confused plenty of times, sure, but Thor's pretty much the definition of peppy and it does a lot to lift Bucky's mood when he gets pessimistic at work and Steve's not around.

"You're an angel." Bucky twitches a tight smile back, because his head is really starting to throb, and raises a hand in a familiar goodbye gesture when they part ways at the corner of Bucky's block.

It had been surprisingly easy to move in with Steve, partially because he and Natasha had basically swapped apartments, Sam moving in with her and Bucky with Steve. Bucky had, probably childishly, not wanted to live with Steve in the same apartment he'd shared with Brock, and had done his best to pretend his reasoning for doing the swap that way was purely logical (Steve's place is closer to the new studio). He's ninety percent sure that Steve knew exactly why he really wanted to do it that way, but his boyfriend was kind enough not to mention it.

Things in their relationship are remarkably… stable. That's the best word Bucky can think of, musing on it absently as he trudges into the apartment and strips off his jacket to drop on the couch. Steve isn't home, he never is at this time of day, and that level of routine in a relationship is still weird for Bucky to wrap his head around. They work, they come home and have dinner together, they have fun, they fuck, they sleep curled up in each other's arms, they pee with the door open and shower together without having sex when they're both in a rush in the morning. It's more domestic than Bucky had ever imagined he'd get, and it's been low-key itching at him for a while now.

It's nice, Steve is definitely happy with their stable domestic life, and Bucky is too. There's just a small part of him that second-guesses himself. A quiet voice in the back of his mind that refuses to go silent, the one that tells him he doesn't need to eat so much, that he doesn't need to restrict his workouts to the maximum his therapist recommends, that he doesn't deserve calm domesticity when he could be fulfilling his _potential_. The voice that wants _more more more_ and always refuses to be satisfied.

The part of him that's always hungry is starting to feel starved.

Bucky shoves the thoughts out of his mind and yanks his boots off before he goes into the kitchen, rummaging in the freezer for vodka. He glances at the meal plan taped to the fridge as he straightens up with the bottle in hand, and figures if he puts a couple of shots in fruit juice he can count it as a dessert. He feels slightly guilty about it, these little substitutions that have been creeping into his diet more and more since it started to become clear that the new company wasn't exactly what he'd hoped, but not guilty enough that he doesn't quickly write _'fruit cup at work'_ in the appropriate space before pouring himself a Natasha-strength vodka and orange juice. His tolerance is through the roof now he's eating enough to not be drinking on an empty stomach, but a little buzz is the fastest way to kill his headache.

It takes Bucky way too long to decide what to wear for this interview, especially since he can't remember if he's supposed to have his picture taken during it or not. Usually they want a candid snap or two, magazines and blogs, to fill up the page because there's only so many questions they can ask when they don't give a shit about his ballet career and are just interested in the viral video. They like Bucky generally, he's a public-friendly mixture of witty and scathing when he wants to be, but it doesn't make him feel any more secure about his appearance. Especially when the people looking at the picture will be comparing him to what they saw in the video, that gaunt figure he hates and wants back all at the same time.

He tries on three pairs of jeans before he finds one that doesn't make his thighs look huge and still fits around the waist (his second-most-fat-pair, which gives him a bad feeling in his stomach), and finishes the rest of his drink before he searches for a shirt. Black is slimming (and doesn't he still hear _that_ in his mother's voice), so he digs out a button-down that makes his collarbones pop and his wrists look skinny. The pain in his head is slightly dulled by the time he goes to look for socks, figuring he'll take one of Steve's fluffy pairs against the freezing weather. It still makes him feel weirdly safe to wear his boyfriend's clothes, and it brings a smile to his pale lips as he rummages in Steve's horribly-disorganised sock drawer.

Bucky's expecting to find unpaired socks and maybe a random bottle of lube stashed in the drawer (Steve's never got out of the habit of 'hiding' his sex stuff from when he lived with his mother). What he's not expecting is for his hand to close around a small box. His heart drops into the pit of his stomach before he even pulls it out, pops it open with shaking fingers, and freezes.

A thick silver band with a groove running around the centre, shiny above it and matte below. It's unmistakeably an engagement ring, sitting there gleaming up at him innocently in its blue velvet setting like it hasn't just punched him in the gut.

Bucky jerks back into life after a few seconds and snaps the box shut, shoving it back into the drawer as fast as he can. His ears are ringing and his chest feels like it's tightening in a vice as he backs away from the dresser to sit heavily on the edge of the bed.

He can't deal with this right now. He's got the company and the Nutcracker production to worry about, he has to get back in shape to dance a lead role, he's got magazine interviews and a documentary crew showing up at his office on Monday morning, he…

It's autopilot, the way Bucky stumbles into the bathroom and calmly scoops his hair back into a ponytail before he leans over the toilet. For a long moment he just hangs there, one hand braced against the wall and the other twisted in the bottom of his shirt to keep it still. He knows exactly how to make himself calm, to make his brain shut down and forget about the bombshell he'd just dropped on himself. He knows exactly how to fuck up and protect himself from the prospect of never being able to fuck up again.

After a few minutes of being frozen in his old patterns, Bucky unsteadily straightens up and walks out of the bathroom without purging. He has three missed calls from Thor and he's probably running late as hell, but he goes to pour himself another drink before he thinks about any of that.

How can Steve want him as a husband? Bucky still barely feels like a person most days, how can he be a _husband_? How can he take on the responsibility of a marriage? How could he stand there and promise Steve that he'd always be the guy he chose, that he'd never relapse and turn into a monster? He could never ever fuck up again, he'd be—

Bucky swallows vodka straight from the bottle and grimaces, steeling himself and trying to force the thoughts out of his head. He can't be a mess right now, he needs to go to his interview and be normal and remember to _smile_. He hasn't heard things in his mother's voice for weeks, but today the instructions to stow his shit and smile through the storm in his head come loud and clear.

It'll be fine, he lies to himself feverishly as he shoves some of the leftover pizza in the fridge into his mouth and hurries out the door, chewing robotically through congealed cheese and trying to pretend he's not suddenly, blindingly hungry.  

It'll all be fine. It has to be. 


	2. Spinning

"Are they fucking serious?"

Bucky's eternally grateful that Maria Hill was all too willing to leave their previous company at the first opportunity after Alexander Pierce took over, even for a fledgling company and a pretty substantial pay cut. He's not sure what he'd do without her right now.

"How the shit are we supposed to put on a Nutcracker production? What do they want us to do, shove students onto the stage with zero experience?" Her foul mouth (only revealed to Bucky once he started working with her as a choreographer and her equal, rather than a dancer and her subordinate) is oddly reassuring, and Bucky leans heavily on his desk opposite her with a grimace.

"I know, I know. But my hands are tied here." It makes him feel like shit to say that, like he's no better than the suits who are puppeteering him through this whole debacle. He's supposed to be dancing to his own tune by now, and instead he feels like he's in freefall. "We could figure something out with the Nutcracker suite, maybe? It's twenty minutes long."

"Come on, who's going to pay for twenty minutes?" Maria understands exactly why they're being coerced into this, and she's experienced at figuring out profit margins when Bucky doesn't have a clue. This isn't the first time he's felt out of his depth since he started the company, but it's the first time he's started to feel really hopeless. "We could try to simplify the story, take out the pine forest section and cut down the sweets in the second act to just the final waltz."

"And then the critics will tear us apart for not doing the whole thing." Bucky groans and rubs a hand over his eyes, prickly and raw from not sleeping all night for worrying about this. "This is gonna be a disaster."

"Probably. But we'll go down swinging." Maria sighs and stands up, dressed for teaching the class she's now late for because of this emergency meeting. "I'll get all our senior dancers on it, see if we can come up with something contemporary that might actually be doable in the time."

"Remind me to give you like nine Christmas bonuses as soon as we make any money." Bucky sighs, gratefully. They exchange tight, knowing smiles before Maria heads off to teach her class. The school has to keep running smoothly if they're going to have any hope of keeping the company in one piece, things can't just grind to a halt every time there's a crisis.

Left alone in the office, with his assistant not coming in for an hour and his first class not until five, Bucky is suddenly fucking starving.

He's already eaten his carefully packed lunch, nutritionally balanced and planned the same way he makes it every day that Steve doesn't wake up before him and do it as a labour of love ("Not a labour, Buck, a favour. It's not a big deal."). He has a protein, a carb, a vegetable, and a fat if he's not having a fruit. Today he ate a fat and a fruit (and Steve's so _proud_ that he's been doing that for the past couple of weeks, and Clint will be so _proud_ when he finds out how _well_ he's doing when Bucky finally reschedules his appointment), and Bucky knows he should be pleased with himself. He should be satisfied and not thinking about his stomach, because that's exactly what he's planned his diet to do: he's never supposed to get too hungry or too full so he never has the opportunity to obsess over it.

But right now he's so _fucking_ hungry he can't see straight. Bucky searches in his pockets and then the bottom of his little messenger bag (not a handbag, he distantly remembers explaining to Natasha back when he was _fine_ and they were being flippant and he wasn't thinking about food, it's a man bag and it's _fashionable_ ) for change, finally digging up enough small coins to duck out to the vending machine when the hallway is quiet. He hadn't wanted them in the studio at all, had made various noises about healthy eating and nutrition while the building was being outfitted, but his business partners had already hashed out a deal with the machine company so there wasn't a lot he could do at that point.

At this precise moment, he's very happy about being powerless.

The machine carries Oreos, and that's what Bucky feeds his dollars into it to get a pack of four, eight, twelve. He grabs a pack of gum as an afterthought, because he's kidding himself if he pretends he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen in a few minutes. He has class this afternoon, a meeting later, and he can't pretend he's a stupid kid who can't keep his shit together anymore. He's got a toothbrush in his office, he remembers belatedly, an emergency measure that he'd justified to himself as trying to compensate for Steve's over-garlic-ing of every dish of leftovers he brought in for lunch. Not that he was planning for something, not at all.

He'd almost believed the lie, back then. Back when recovery seemed…

Bucky snaps back to himself to find he's locked in a bathroom stall, crumbs clinging to his lips and the soggy grit of half-chewed cookie heavy in his mouth. He jerks like he's been shocked, lurching over to spit the remains of the cookie into the toilet. The bright blue wrappers on the shiny tiled floor catch his eye, and he realises he must have eaten _all_ of the junk he bought. He hadn't even realised, he'd never even registered the taste or the texture until he'd already fucked up.

The bile is threatening to rise in his throat without any encouragement, but there's some kind of weight keeping his hands away from his face, his fingers away from his mouth. Bucky stands there for a few seconds, dithering and trying not to bend over and let his binge come up to find some relief, before he flips down the toilet lid and sits down on it heavily, fumbling for his phone in his pocket and scrolling shakily through his contacts.

"Hi." His voice is a lot less steady than he'd hoped it would be, when the call is finally picked up, and that's what makes Bucky blurt out the truth almost as much as the panic rising in his chest. "I think I'm relapsing."

"Where are you now?" Clint's voice is as steady and unfazed as always, and Bucky is absurdly grateful for the shred of calm that works its way back into him when he feels like somebody is actually in control of the situation. "Why do you think you're relapsing?"

"I'm, uh, I'm locked in the bathroom at work." Bucky hopes he had the presence of mind to lock the external door, anyway. He has no idea what happened between the vending machine and here. "I binged. I'm at fuckin' work, I can't do this here."

"Are you safe? Do you feel safe?"

"I binged. I got crap from the vending machine. I don't even remember eating it." Bucky runs a hand unsteadily through his hair, trying to get his thoughts in order underneath the embarrassment that's crashing over him because _why the fuck did he call nobody had to know he fucked up why did he show weakness like this_. "I'm sorry, I didn't even purge or anything. I shouldn't have called."

"Bucky, slow down. You called for a reason, it's okay." Clint is definitely talking him down, Bucky knows the tone from experience, but he doesn't get irritated by it. It's reassuring more than anything else, in this situation. "Do you feel like you want to purge?"

"…I don't know." He admits, after a long pause during which he pulls most of the skin off the side of his thumb and tries not to think about how grounding the pain is. The flat pink scar on his wrist is just peeking out from under the watch strap that keeps it hidden every day, and Bucky tries not to look at it directly as if it'll jinx him. "I don't want to. I've been close a couple of times in… in the last few days. But I don't want to."

"That's good. That's really good." The encouragement is gentle, not patronising, and Bucky feels ridiculous again because if there were _really_ anything wrong then Clint would sound more worried right now. "Can you describe how you're feeling right now?"

"I… I'm fine, really. I shouldn't have called you." Bucky realises he's smearing blood on his jeans from the side of his thumb and curses under his breath, shoving his hand into his pocket. At least he's too humiliated to remember that he wants to puke right now. "Sorry I missed my appointment."

"Don't worry about it." He knows Clint will talk to him about personal responsibility when he's actually in front of him, but for some reason he's talking to Bucky like he's a startled colt at the moment. "I'm not mad, talk to me. What's going on?"

"No, I'm fine. Honest. I'm sorry I called. I'm fine." Bucky might be babbling a little, he's distantly aware, but he's got class and a meeting and Steve and he _can't_ be like this right now. He can't fuck up at the first hurdle when there's so much riding on him and his business partners would probably be all too happy to swoop in and take over when he finally proves that he can't handle a world outside of being told how to dance. "I'll, uh, I've gotta go. I'll reschedule my appointment for next week or something, if that's okay."

"Bucky, wait—"

He hangs up before Clint can say anything else, acutely embarrassed by the weakness he's fallen back into with barely a protest. He's supposed to be better, one slightly difficult day isn't supposed to throw him back into the kind of bullshit he's been fighting against for months now, for almost a year. Steve would be…

Steve can't know. Steve thinks Bucky is marriage material. Steve thinks Bucky is normal and stable enough to plan the rest of his life with. And Bucky has been trying so hard to be like that, at least until he realised Steve wanted _forever_ and what forever meant and…

The water from the sink is ice-cold in the winter, and Bucky is thankful for the shock as he splashes it on his face and tries to get his heart rate back to something near normal. He needs to pull himself together. One tiny binge, that pales in comparison to the way he used to stuff food down his throat like he was starving and trying to choke himself at the same time, it's nothing. He shouldn't be so fucking _histrionic_ about this shit. He shouldn't be so _weak_.

His mother's voice echoing loud in his head, Bucky grits his teeth and goes back to work. He chews gum and smiles pleasantly for the office staff and burns enough calories during his dance classes that he can keep a level head during his meetings after hours. When he finally gets done with work at eight o'clock, Steve is waiting for him outside his office with a cup of takeout coffee and a sympathetic smile.

"Hey, Buck. _Hey_." He lets out a surprised laugh when Bucky flings himself into his arms without even a second of hesitation. A little concern creeps into his voice, just subtly, when Bucky doesn't let go of him immediately and buries his face further in his boyfriend's broad chest. "You okay?"

"Stressed. Happy to see you." Bucky breathes Steve in for a long moment before he finally pulls back, taking the coffee with a grateful twitch of a smile. "Sorry, it's been a really long day."

"I know, you were out before I even woke up this morning." Steve leans down and kisses him softly on the lips, and it's only then that Bucky notices his close shave, the cologne he rarely bothers with, and the way his hair is combed back neatly in his favourite hipster coif instead of the usual loose shag it ends up in.

Shit. They have a date.

"You still good for dinner?" He doesn't look like he has high expectations, and Bucky notices that he hasn't dressed for the occasion, but there's no irritation or disappointment in Steve's face or tone of voice. This is the one person that Bucky actually feels like he can show his weakness in front of, that he can ask things of without feeling guilty, and he refuses to think about whether or not that means they're _marriage material_.

Especially when he (is probably being paranoid and imagining he) can feel the small, hard bump of the ring box in Steve's pants pocket.

"Can we get a drink instead?" Bucky sounds a little tentative, apologetic, and a slight frown creases Steve's brow at the tone. "M'sorry. It's been such a rough couple of days… I just don't know if I can handle a big meal in public. Sorry, babe."

"It's fine, we don't have reservations or anything." Steve takes his hands and brings them to his lips, kissing Bucky's knuckles in the little gesture he's developed from god knows where. "Don't look so worried, I'd rather you tell me you're not up to it now than have you feeling shitty later."

Bucky goes up on his toes and kisses Steve again, communicating all his relief and gratitude physically because he can't quite put it into words right there in the hall, in the semi-dark and quiet of the company that's closing down for the night around them. He loves this man so much he can hardly understand it, not that the thought helps with how guilty he feels about ruining their plans tonight.

But if they go to dinner, if they get into a restaurant with waiters who wear suits and three kinds of silverware, then Steve might propose. Bucky can't let that happen, not until he's prepared to deal with it and not just run away from the question and blow everything once and for all.

"I need a drink. Like a three drinks in one glass kind of drink." Bucky breaks the kiss and smiles up at his boyfriend, forcing as much sunniness into his expression as possible despite the tiredness he knows he can't keep out of his eyes. "Today sucked and yesterday sucked, and I just want to get a little drunk and make out with you a little bit. Is that okay?"

"That's very okay." Steve still has that little crease of worry at the corners of his eyes, but they've come far enough to work out that trying to pry what's wrong out of Bucky before he's ready to talk about it isn't good for either of them, so he smiles back and doesn't protest.

Steve's learned to protect himself from hurricane Bucky, and Bucky's acutely grateful for that. He couldn't stand it if he pushed his boyfriend back to the breakdown he'd had back when Bucky was first in treatment, if he thought he was still doing that to Steve then he'd leave tomorrow. It's a strangely half-comforting thought, that he'd cut himself off before he hurt the one person he loves more than life itself.

An hour later, in their regular local bar that's comfortable and familiar and lets some of the tension creep out of Bucky's shoulders as soon as they get through the door, Bucky is definitely, unmistakably, drunk.

"Woah, easy there. I'm not that funny." Steve jokes, steadying Bucky when he leans a little too far sideways on his stool while laughing at some terrible pun he made. _Steve_ thinks he's hilarious, but Bucky usually affectionately tells him he's a dork rather than outright laughs at his jokes.

Bucky's mostly been subtly refusing to talk about work tonight, instead wanting to hear stories about the band Steve's doing session work for and anything lighthearted that's not related to him or the company. He keeps checking his phone nervously, occasionally swiping away from a text or dropping a call, and Steve is slightly worried that he's a little too keyed-up for it to be entirely excess energy. Sometimes this happens when he hasn't been eating, and if that's the case then the stress is more serious than he'd thought.

But then he does a quick count of the glasses on the table while Bucky's in the bathroom, and he realises that his boyfriend isn't jittery because he's hungry, it's because he's _wasted_. Bucky had started off on double vodkas when they got here and even if he'd switched to singles somewhere along the line then he'd be drunk right now. And Steve's pretty sure he never heard him switch to singles, not that he'd been paying that much attention when Bucky had been looking gorgeous and laughing at his jokes and seeming like he was getting his work stress out of his system.

There's a commotion towards the back of the bar and Steve is out of his seat the second he sees a familiar skinny figure stumbling back against the wall. The guy Bucky's clearly walked into doesn't look particularly angry, more shocked about having an entire drink knocked over him, but Bucky's shrinking away from the situation like he's trying to disappear into the wallpaper and avoid a beating.

"I'm sorry buddy, he's had a little too much." Steve is stepping right in the middle with his apologies and most winning smile, slinging his arm around Bucky's waist to keep him on his feet and pull him upright. The guy does look a little pissed now, but he's clearly here with his girlfriend and isn't about to start a fight. "Lemme get you another one, huh?"

"You wanna keep your friend on a leash." The man grunts as Steve shoves twenty bucks into his hand, trying to keep everything civil and quiet because this is their local and Bucky doesn't need any of this hitting the internet with his new-found fame amplifying everything. Bucky makes some kind of unhappy noise into Steve's shoulder and Steve nods, awkwardly, before hauling his boyfriend outside as discreetly as possible.

"M'sorry. I tripped." Bucky is already shivering in the cold as soon as they leave the bar, and Steve can't tell if it's really the weather or the ridiculous amounts of alcohol in his system that are making him cling so tight. "M'sorry."

"It's okay Buck, shit happens." Steve presses a dry kiss to his forehead before he starts basically frogmarching his boyfriend in the direction of their apartment, not entirely sure why Bucky had walked out of work with the singular intention of getting too drunk to walk straight.

He's worried, concern just itching at the back of his mind where his Bucky-sense tells him something is really wrong, but everybody has a bad day at the office sometimes, right? At least Bucky's blowing off steam instead of eating his weight in junk and sticking his fingers down his throat.

Steve has no logical reason to be too worried about anything except a ruined date and his boyfriend's hangover, he supposes. The little box in his pocket can't possibly be as heavy as it feels, and he settles for keeping Bucky tight against his side and making sure neither of them stumble on the frosty sidewalk as they slowly make their way home. There will be other opportunities to propose.

Tonight can't have been his only chance.


	3. detox just to retox

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, folks. My life has been nine shades of shit. But this is back on track now, thank you so much for your patience! 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and there's more coming soon!

"You wanna tell me why you've been dodging my calls and ignoring my emails? And skipping your appointments?"

Clint Barton: direct, abrupt, but never angry. He's probably the best therapist Bucky could have, even if he occasionally feels about two inches tall and made entirely of guilt in front of him. He's missed a few therapy sessions lately, he'll admit, but he doesn't think it's as big a deal as Clint's making it out to be.

Not that he's told anyone around him that he's skipped appointments. He's not _that_ stupid.  

"Not really." Bucky mumbles, crossing his arms over his stomach and shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He feels vaguely nauseous and disconnected from the world around him by a thick pane of glass, and he'd very much like to be back in bed right now. Every time he thinks about last night has to physically blink the shame away from the pit of his stomach, and it's making him distressingly hungry.

"Well, no offence, but you look hungover as shit." Clint raises his eyebrows and Bucky grumbles something unintelligible under his breath. By now, he speaks enough passable Barnes-avoidance-dialect to interpret it. "I'll trade you aspirin for answers."

"That's blackmail." But Bucky sticks his hand out for the bottle Clint offers him anyway, thumping head and dry mouth winning out over pride. "I was dumb and got drunk on a weeknight because I hate my fucking job."

"I thought the new company was supposed to help you solve the whole hating your job thing." Clint always manages to make it sound like they're just friends having a conversation, not judgemental even as Bucky chugs water to swallow the aspirin down and rubs a hand over his dry face. There are no new welts on his knuckles, so at least it looks like he's keeping on top of purging.

"Yeah, well. It's not exactly turning out like I expected. Story of my fucking life." There's a heaviness to Bucky's limbs that has nothing to do with the hangover, making him move like he's pushing sluggishly against some opposing force the entire time. It gives Clint pause, at least as much as the semi-incoherent phone call mid-binge had.

This is why he has more regular appointments with Bucky than a lot of his patients, because the guy is so good at throwing up the façade that everything's fine that Clint needs to see him with his eyes and read his behavioural cues to get an accurate picture of his state of mind. It's made it hard to guess at how things really are when Bucky's been avoiding him, so finally getting the guy into his office is a step in the right direction.

"Is that why you binged the other day? When you called me?" Bringing _that_ up only makes Bucky sink down further in his chair, pulling his knees up so he's curled into himself in that defensive posture that hasn't shown up since before he went to treatment last year. It doesn't serve to reassure Clint any.

"I have to dance lead in a production before the end of December." Bucky cuts Clint off before he so much as opens his mouth. "I don't have a choice, before you ask. It's not my decision, we need it to keep the company going and start turning over a profit. I just got a little stressed about it, that's all. I can handle it."

"Does Steve know you're under more pressure at work?" Silence predictably follows the question, and Clint works very hard to keep his expression neutral.

Bucky has made a hell of a lot of progress in the last six months, but his therapist is still completely unable to convince him that he's not one mistake away from ruining his life. Clint has tried to explain time and again that relapse is an expected part of recovery, that there's no such thing as all Bucky's learned behaviours suddenly disappearing if he just tries hard enough to be _perfect_ (and isn't that line of thinking just what fucks up every almost-breakthrough they get near), but it never gets all the way past the programming that's not totally undone.

His patient has managed to get a handle on the eating food side of his disorder, so far, but Clint is totally, one-hundred-percent convinced that he hasn't addressed the problems that caused the eating disorder in the first place. Bucky seems to think that as long as he's eating enough, there isn't anything to address. Which isn't ideal, especially when he's under new and increasing pressure.

"I was gonna tell him last night, but I couldn't face it." Bucky chews on his thumbnail inelegantly and is giving off the distinct impression that he'd rather be anywhere else in the world than having to talk about his feelings. "I'll tell him today, I just didn't wanna think about it then."

"Are you sure you don't have a choice about being the lead? Sometimes you can be so focused on not upsetting people that you don't think you—"

"I don't have a fucking choice. They need my name on the poster." Bucky snaps, prickly and defensive in a way he hasn't been for a long time. It visibly takes Clint by surprise and Bucky catches himself, embarrassed. "Sorry. I really dunno why I called you the other day, I didn't purge or anything."

"You felt out of control, that's what I'm here to help you with. It's okay for you to call me when you feel like that." Clint looks him over for a minute while Bucky picks at his nails, and decides that going after the root cause of the binge might shed some light on what's really bothering his patient. "So, can we talk a little bit about why you binged the other day?"

"I don't know. I was stressed. I didn't mean to." Bucky rattles them off one after another, the blanket justifications he always rolls out. They are all true, technically, but they gloss over the specific reasons causing the stress and anxiety he's not managing well.

"You said something about being close to purging a few times before that." Clint leads him down a path, trying to get to something they can use. "Did that coincide with the new production starting up?"

"I guess." He's closed up completely now, and it's baffling Clint because he hasn't seen Bucky like this since they first started working together. He's usually got buttons to push, today everything seems to be buried down deeper than usual.

"You haven't told Steve about the production." Ah, there's the flinch. He flips to a new page in his notebook, because Bucky tends to be encouraged by him writing things down, like he's saying something worth documenting. Today is making Clint pull out all his tricks, it definitely smacks of a slide backwards. "So, work sucks. How are things at home?"

"Things are _great_." There's an edge to his voice that Bucky quickly catches himself on, rubbing his face again and visibly taking a breath before he corrects himself. "No, really, they are great. Steve is amazing, I love him and he's really supportive and I'm happy with the way things are between us."

"I'm sensing a 'but'." Clint prompts gently, when the rest of whatever's hiding behind Bucky's teeth doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Bucky pulls the sleeves of his sweater down to hide his hands entirely, worrying the fabric with his fingertips and not looking at his therapist.

"I… I just. I don't want anything to change between us. I like things how they are." He sounds very small as he says it, like he's asking someone to check for monsters under his bed, and the sudden vulnerability throws Clint for another loop. There's something seriously bothering him here, but at least he can see where it is.

"Why do you think would things change?" The prompting doesn't help much, because Bucky just shrugs and chews on his lip for a moment like he's weighing things up. Figuring out a version of the truth to deliver, Clint knows that look.

"I think he's going to propose. Something my sister said… I think he's gonna ask me to marry him." Bucky admits, after a moment of pregnant silence. Clint's not surprised by the statement, not with everything he knows about Steve and the way the relationship has been developing, but the dread in Bucky's voice is something he wasn't expecting.

"And you don't want him to do that?"

"If he asks me then I'll say yes, and then…" Bucky shakes his head, still not looking at Clint as he starts to get increasingly jittery. Clint can recognise the signs that he's getting worked up, the way he shoves his hands under his legs so he can hide them trembling and how he lets his hair fall around his face so he can hide, but Bucky doesn't give him anything more to work with. He shuts his mouth forcibly, like he's clamping down on whatever is threatening to come out and upset him further.

"Bucky." Clint never has to draw him out like this anymore, and it's really starting to make him question how much of their recent sessions has been truth and what's been an act. "You could tell him how you—"

"He thinks I'm marriage material. _Me_." There's the dam going, as Bucky raises his head and finally fixes wide eyes on his therapist, and Clint braces himself because this could be ugly. "I had to ask him this morning if I threw up last night, because I was too drunk to remember and I have to log it in my book of fuck ups for the nutritionist. The nutritionist I have to see because it's impossible for me to do something as simple as fucking eat like a normal person. And he thinks _that_ piece of shit is marriage material?!"

"Do you think you're not good enough for Steve?" He doesn't address the negative self-image more explicitly, not that moment, but it goes into his notes as a massive red flag.

Treating Bucky always feels like walking a tightrope between letting him find his own way out of the darkness, and dragging him kicking and screaming into the spotlight. He's been doing so well recently, with the physical side of his disorder and the mental work on unpacking his family relationships and past, and Clint never saw something like this throwing him so badly. Maybe he's been stupid enough to forget just what Bucky in a spiral looks like until it's shoved right back in front of his face.

"I think I'm not _good enough_ for anyone. I still don't know why he fucking puts up with me half the time." Bucky runs a hand through his hair, tugging on it just enough that he can't get told to stop hurting himself. "If we get married then I have to make sure I'm good enough for him all the time. I don't want to have to be good enough for him, I want to be me with him. Like things are now."

"You don't have to change just because you—"

"He gets depressed, I know he does. And it's not because of me, and I've been able to help him when it happens so far, but what if I fuck up? What if I relapse and go back to being fucked up all the time and I can't help him?"

"Wait, hold on." Clint holds up his hand just a fraction, low and not quickly enough to make Bucky flinch. "Steve gets depressed? When did this start being a thing?"

"When I went into treatment. He kinda went to pieces for a while, and I can't do that to him again. If I relapse and we're _married_ then he can't leave if he needs to, and he has to protect himself. He promised he'd leave if he had to and if he can't… I can't drag him down with me, and if he ties us together then—"

"Bucky, slow down a second." Usually, Clint would let him rant himself out and talk himself into a conclusion they could unpick together. But today Bucky is just all over the place, and now he's opened up the torrent of anxiety and self-hatred is just overwhelming. This must have been building up for a long time, how long has Bucky been lying to him for and pretending he's _fine_? "Let's make a list, okay? We can set out the things you're worried about clearly and then—"

"I don't want to make a list. I don't want to think about it anymore." He looks vaguely nauseated, like he's shocked at the words pouring out of his mouth, and that's not promising because he hasn't reacted like that for a year now.

"It might be a good idea to—"   

"I don't want to think about it. I have to _think_ about everything all the time, I have to plan my meals and my exercise and check in with my fucking _emotions_ and make sure I'm being normal and I just want a _break_ from it." Bucky cuts himself off by biting his lip hard enough to make himself wince, and it takes a couple of breaths for him to trust himself to open his mouth again and speak evenly. "That's why I got drunk last night, because I was scared Steve was gonna propose and I was too stressed and my head was too full to figure a way out of it. So I stopped thinking for a while."

Well that's not concerning, or anything. The office goes quiet for a minute while Bucky catches his breath (and looks like he's trying not to throw up in the nearest wastebasket, Clint keeps them plastic lined because he's had his fair share of nervous puker patients over the years) and Clint gets his thoughts in order. This is a huge bombshell that's just exploded all over their session, and he's on the back foot trying to find a way to constructively deal with the shrapnel without cutting Bucky open all over again.

"You want to relapse, because when you were carrying out your disordered behaviours you didn't have to think. You were comfortable on autopilot. And everything is super stressful right now, so you want that comfort back." Clint parses out levelly, half for himself and half for his patient, because he thinks he's starting to get Bucky's issue clear, now. "And you feel like if you and Steve get married then you'll lose that safety net, because you won't drag him into a relapse when he can't walk away. You've reached the point where you realise you need to make a choice about your disorder, and you're not ready for that."

Bucky shakes his head, not as a _no_ but as a jerky gesture of being overwhelmed by it all, and pushes himself to his feet. He doesn't want to hear that he misses his life of feeling like shit all the time and working himself into an early grave because it was easier, because at least he knew what the fuck was going on then. He doesn't want to hear that he's probably sabotaging his relationship for fear of having to break up with his disorder for good. He doesn't want to deal with any of it, he just wants his brain to shut up and everyone leave him alone for a while.

He wants a fucking drink, because that would at least achieve part one.

"I'm not relapsing, so it doesn't matter. I'm not binging or purging or thinking about hurting myself or what the fuck ever. So I don't want to talk about it anymore." It's denial and dismissal all at once, and he knows it. He even manages to feel guilty about it as he grabs his jacket and checks the clock, because he can definitely duck out of the last ten minutes of a session without feeling the need to punish himself.

"Bucky, I kinda think you really, really need to talk about it." Clint looks like he's about to say something else, but Bucky cuts him off before he can. He's just told someone that he doesn't want his boyfriend, who he _loves_ , to propose to him, and the betrayal makes him feel lower than dirt. A prime example of exactly why Steve shouldn't want to marry someone like _him_.

"I'm not going to. I'm making a choice, that's _healthy_ , right?" He stops himself again, catching the viciousness and looking his therapist in the eye regretfully. Clint can see him pleading for something, but he's not sure either of them know what. "I'm sorry. I can't do this today. I just can't."

Bucky hurries out of the office before they can make another appointment, because at that moment he might yell or cry if he gets pushed any further and he can't handle that. He pauses in the hallway, getting himself together before he has to walk into the waiting room, past the other patients who've probably all seen him post-tears and worse if they're regulars. He's not sure when he'll be back, at this point, thinks maybe he needs some time to get his shields back up before he sees Clint again. He hates to let people down.

Thor is waiting for him outside the building, playing Candy Crush on his phone and humming something that sounds like AC/DC under his breath. He sees his boss coming and pulls Bucky's cigarettes out of his pocket, holding them out before he has the chance to ask. It's official, Bucky thinks, Thor is _wonderful_.

"How hard would you judge me if I said we should get lunch at the bar?" He asks, filter half between his teeth as he fumbles with his lighter in the cold. He's been trying to quit, nebulously, but nicotine patches and gum just haven't been cutting it lately.

"I'd say you look like you're trying to kill a hangover and that's not something I'm about to judge." Thor smiles his usual wide grin and Bucky can't help but smile back in spite of the pain in his head and the gnawing in his stomach. It's nice to be around someone who doesn't know about his _issues_ and start questioning him the minute he's not behaving _properly_. "Celebrating on a school night?"

"More like drowning my sorrows." Bucky makes sure he pouts dramatically as he says it, so it sounds more like sarcasm or flippancy than the truth. His assistant never notices because he doesn't know about Bucky's _issues_ , and it lets him feel some of that old thrill he used to get from eating and purging and everyone around him being convinced that he was fine: _getting away with it_.

"Anything I can help with?" He's a sweetheart, a big puppy of sunshine, and Bucky bumps shoulders with him affectionately because Thor is less threatening than Steve right now. Thor doesn't know how weird he really is, and that's a comfort. At least he can fire his assistant if he gets too embarrassed about behaving weirdly in front of him.

"Nah. I just don't want to think about anything for a while." Bucky pops his neck and starts walking, deliberately not looking back at the office. "C'mon big guy, let's get the hell outta here."

"I know a bar a couple blocks over that does good burgers. You're not in a meeting 'til two." Thor suggests, catching up in two big strides to Bucky's smaller ones. It's reassuring to feel small next to someone, and Bucky refuses to give a shit if that's unhealthy. He's sick of thinking about _health_ right now.

"Wherever you want, man." Bucky sends Steve a quick text, making sure he sounds like he's fine as he keeps all his balls in the air. He can juggle this, he just has to make more of an effort. "I'm not hungry, anyway."


	4. Pinch

"We don't have time, Buck."

"We have literally _so_ much time."

Bucky makes puppy eyes from his position hanging off the bed upside-down, and Steve tries not to laugh at the ridiculous picture he makes. His cheeks are already bright pink from being the wrong way up too long, and he generally looks flushed and extremely put out by not currently having a dick in his mouth. So, the usual.

"If we're late again then Sam—"

"Steve. Steven _Grant_." Bucky rolls onto his front with his bitchiest huff of exasperation, blowing strands of hair off his forehead emphatically. Steve just fucking adores him even when he's being a princess, sometimes especially then. "You're the only guy I've ever met who actively turns down blowjobs."

"Last time we were late for dinner Sam sent me _mm whatcha say_ memes for two weeks."

"You want me to beg? Is that it?" Bucky rolls off the bed dramatically and falls to his knees, slinking across the carpet to his boyfriend with way more undulation than is strictly necessary. "Please? I'm _sooo_ horny. Please let me put that American sausage in my mouth. Please, Daddy."

"Oh ew. Buck, c'mon." Steve laughs, shoving lightly at Bucky's shoulder when he tries to forcibly nuzzle his crotch. The daddy thing is a boner killer for him and Bucky knows it, letting him know he's just playing around and Steve isn't actually denying his thirsty boyfriend water in the dick Sahara. "I'm just kinda not in the mood, alright?"

"I figured." The admission stops Bucky's exaggerated attempts to get a dick in his mouth, because that's what he'd really been pushing for anyway. Steve always comes back from his Mom's with his game face on, even more so since she started chemo, and it takes a little strategic pushing to get him to admit that he's not totally fine. "Tired?"

"Nah. Just wiped out." It's cagy, because Steve's never exactly forthcoming with his negative feelings about anything (anything that matters, anyway, he can ramble about innocuous shit he hates at _length_ , as Bucky knows first-hand. Most recently there was a big debate about the onscreen portrayal of sexual violence in Game of Thrones… it was a mess, Bucky had to forcibly end the conversation by sticking his tongue down Steve's throat. Not that he _minded_ ).

"How was she today?" Bucky squeezes Steve's thigh when he gets a look at the tension that floods his face at the question. He's still on his knees in front of his boyfriend, and he pushes himself up a little further to nudge between Steve's legs and run his fingers gently over his hairline. Steve takes to touch like a cat when he's had a hard day, and they all seem to be hard lately.

"Okay. She gets tired, y'know? Treatment takes it outta her." Steve sighs and goes willingly when Bucky pushes him down to lay his head on his shoulder. He drapes his arms loosely around his boyfriend's waist and breathes him in, letting the familiarity settle his stomach. "I… She doesn't like the nurse. They come over to do stuff between chemo and… I dunno."

"Can they send someone else?" Bucky keeps softly stroking the back of Steve's neck, trying to be grounding and as supportive as he can in a situation there's nothing he can do to help. Sarah had been diagnosed not long after he got out of treatment, and Steve never really recovered from the double blow of them both being sick at the same time. He's the same person, mostly, but some of his optimism and relentless belief that most things will turn out okay has dimmed a little.

Which is exactly why Bucky is determined to keep as much of his bullshit to himself as possible. Steve needs support, not someone else to worry about right now.

"To be honest, I've been thinking about moving back in for a while. I don't like the nurse, Ma doesn't like the nurse. I could give her the shots and shit if I was there." Steve twists his head to press his face closer into Bucky's neck, like he can hide from reality in there. He sounds resigned, and that always worries Bucky more than it probably should. "Maybe. I dunno."

"You know I'm okay with you doing that, right?" Bucky points out quietly, resting his cheek on Steve's half-crunchy hair where the product is starting to wear off and disintegrate after a long day. "I just want you to watch out for yourself, if you decide to do it. Make sure you get breaks? It's so hard for you to see her when it's bad."

"I can't just stay away because it's _hard_." Steve sighs, straightening up like he needs better posture to hold the world on his shoulders. Bucky forces a feeble smile because he doesn't know what the hell else to do.

"I know, baby. I'm just saying you've gotta watch out for yourself, otherwise you burn out. Look where that gets you." He gestures at himself and makes a face, and Steve laughs weakly so it's worth it. "Do what you've gotta do, but no medals for suffering, okay? Don't get Catholic on me."

"Don't ask me for miracles. I'll find you an appropriate saint." Steve snorts, and Bucky cranes up to kiss him. If he were a better person he'd marry Steve tomorrow, god knows he would. But he doesn't want to be a contaminant, not when infection is such a real possibility at the moment.

"I…" Steve leans back down to touch their foreheads together, the position he always takes when he's not sure how Bucky's going to receive whatever he has to say, and Bucky instinctively braces himself for what's coming. "I'm worried about leaving you on your own. Not _worried_ , just… If I gotta look after myself then you do too. I know you do, I just… Promise me?"

It shouldn't sting, because Bucky knows logically that Steve's perfectly justified in worrying about him being left to his own devices for the first extended period of time since treatment, but he still feels the blow after a year of working so goddamn hard to get back to some arbitrary standard of _normal_. Still, he shoves down his instinctive reaction because he _knows_ Steve is just looking out for him, and he loves this boy so much that he can't even get defensive about it.

"I promise." He tilts his face to peck a kiss to the tip of Steve's nose, a little reassuring gesture that seems to soothe some of the tension in his boyfriend's shoulders. "Go shower, babe. I won't even harass you."

"Okay, now I know it's the apocalypse. Bucky Barnes doesn't feel up naked man in the shower, news at ten." Steve laughs, actually sounding a little brighter this time in spite of his weariness, and presses a slow, soft kiss to Bucky's lips before he stands up. He offers Bucky his hand and pulls him up off the floor too. "Can you text Nat and see if they need us to pick anything up on the way? Beer or whatever?"

"Sure. Now go wash the hospital off and relax, you're off-duty starting now." Bucky shoos him into the bathroom and maintains his positive expression until the door shuts. Then, when he can't be seen, he tips his face up to the ceiling and blows out a long, expressive sigh. Fuck.

The kitchen is spotless, as always, and Bucky grabs the orange juice and a beer for Steve out of the fridge before he looks for wherever he left his phone. He pours himself a generous vodka and orange and downs most of it as he checks his messages, half-expecting there to be another email from Stark and Coulson about some production problem he hasn't anticipated but is somehow his fault. As it turns out, there's nothing from work. Just some new pictures of his nephew from Becky and some _in soviet Russia_ memes from Nat in his inbox. He lets out another lengthy, anxious sigh of relief before finishing his drink and getting his ass in gear.

Bucky texts Sarah first, attaching the picture of the _FUCK CANCER_ t-shirt he's been saving for when she needs cheering up, then Nat with Steve's potluck questions. He leans back and glances at the bathroom door, where the shower is still running, before pouring himself another drink and then pointedly shoving the vodka back in the freezer. He doesn't need to be drunk before they get to Nat and Sam's, he just needs to take the edge off a little so he's social enough to make up for Steve's drained energy this evening.

 _btw we're on cheer up steve duty tonight_ he texts Sam, grimacing as he swallows because he definitely over-poured the vodka this time and it burns his throat. It'd burn a lot more if he was still purging on the regular, but he tries not to think about that. _Might be time to break out Time Bandits._

 _Shit._ Sam replies almost immediately, because giving in to Steve's hipster movie choices means he must be at an extremely low ebb. _We picked up that microbrew shit he lieks, N says we're good unless u want weird mixers or w/e._

Bucky debates with himself for a minute before he texts back a negative and a smiling poop emoji because that sums up a lot of shit right now. He struggles with himself again for a moment, staring at the fridge and debating between leftover pizza and more alcohol and how he wants to chill his brain out the most, before choosing neither and wandering through to the bedroom with Steve's beer. He drive-bys a kiss to his boyfriend's bare, damp shoulder and then leaves him to it, giving him a chance to decompress alone because fuck knows he needs it right now.

The beer and the decompression time seem to help, because the next time Bucky goes into the bedroom to find his shoes Steve is busy fiddling with Instagram on his phone. _No time_ his ass, if there's time for filters then there's time for blowjobs; a statement Bucky files away for very important later use.

"Hey, be in my selfie." Steve is standing in front of the mirror, fixing his freshly-gelled hair before he posts his face to his ridiculous amount of internet followers again. "They're starting to think I made you up."

Bucky pauses before doing one of his frankly obnoxious flexible ballet moves and sticking his foot into frame right next to Steve's head. Steve snorts and snaps the picture, because it was always going to be a long shot to get his boyfriend's actual face in a photo destined for the internet. Bucky hates having his picture taken, especially after finding out several stills from _that video_ were doing the rounds on 'thinspiration' blogs, and his poorly-maintained Instagram account is filled with pictures of Steve, their friends, and occasionally his own random body parts, but never his face. He can't deal with that yet.

They walk the few blocks to Sam and Nat's holding hands, each clinging a little harder than they usually would because it's been a pretty crappy day all round. They're halfway there and waiting to cross the street when Bucky realises the yellow streetlight he's looking at absently is taking a second to catch up when he moves his eyes, that he's moving his head with along his gaze for no apparent reason.

Shit.

He either underestimated how much he drank or how much he's eaten (when did he last eat? It must have been this morning, he must have eaten at least once today because he's _not_ relapsing or anything, he's really not), because he's tipsier than he thought. At least he'll be more fun to be around and make up for Steve's quietness, or at least make a show of himself so nobody notices Steve is sad. One of the two.

In actual fact, things at Sam and Nat's go without any awkwardness, as Bucky should really have anticipated. He's still getting used to feeling secure in people _not_ being assholes to him whenever they get the opportunity, so it's still a shock when Nat clocks he's been drinking but doesn't pick him up on it or mock him. It's an irrational worry, Bucky knows, but it doesn't stop his stomach twisting weirdly even as they shoot the shit and stick their casserole in the oven to heat up along with Sam's chilli and Nat's side dishes. Nobody is mad at him, Bucky reminds himself forcefully as he hands Steve a beer and takes the vodka soda Nat pushes his way gratefully, so he can just blend into the group and relax. He hasn't done anything wrong.

The food at their frequent potlucks is usually something protein-heavy and optionally carb-loadable, done family-style so everyone serves themselves instead of being given a prescribed amount to eat. It's the only way Bucky's been able to take part in these meals, because eating a set amount in front of people still makes his palms clammy and his chest tight, and it makes his stomach squeeze a little every time he realises his friends are accommodating him without saying a word about it or expecting thanks. He still finds it hard to believe, is still secretly, reluctantly waiting for the other shoe to drop no matter how much time passes without anyone telling him he's not worth the hassle.

Maybe it'll always be like that, he'll always be waiting for them to turn around and laugh in his face because he was dumb enough to _believe_ they gave a shit, but Bucky doesn't dare to think about it.

They usually eat dotted around the couch and armchairs in the living room, watching some intentionally crappy movie and not paying too much attention to each other as they go. Steve is noticeably perked up by the fact they're playing Time Bandits today, rambling about the plot occasionally and accepting every beer he's handed without hesitation. Bucky takes the opportunity to switch off for a while, curling up with his head on the arm of the couch and picking at his plate of food enough that it looks like he's eating. He manages to get most of the vegetables down, at least, but there'll be another black mark against his carb intake next time he sees the nutritionist.

He dumps his plate and pours himself and Nat more drinks to kill that thought. He refuses to let himself get into a spiral right now, not when Steve is finally relaxing after a shitty day. He practices his smile a couple of times before heading back to the group, prepared.

Not as prepared as he thought, of course, because things take a turn for the worse only half an hour later.

"It's fucking ridiculous." Sam grumbles, helping himself to a liberal amount of mac and cheese for the second time tonight. They're taking the opportunity to restock on food and drink before they play the next movie, because nobody wants to move in the middle of _Independence Day_. "How the shit are we supposed to put on a professional show with a bunch of green kids before Christmas? They dunno what they're talking about."

"I thought you weren't moving on anything 'til January earliest?" Steve frowns, looking over at Bucky where his shoulders have tensed now he realises he's been caught out. He downs another swig of his drink before Steve can prod him for an answer, Sam and Nat exchanging a look because they weren't intending to drop him in it this evening. "Buck?"

"Oh, yeah. I didn't tell you yet." He doesn't bother to feign surprise, because Steve sees right through that, but Bucky twists his mouth apologetically as if he hasn't been putting this conversation off for as long as possible. "The business partners are making us put on the Nutcracker from mid-December."

"And guess who they're making dance the lead." Natasha pipes up dryly, not flinching when Bucky shoots her a betrayed look. Traitor.

"I thought the whole point of this was you not having to be under that pressure anymore? Why didn't you tell me?" All the tension that had drained out of Steve's muscles is ramping back up in seconds, face creased with worry, and Bucky could punch his friends right now because this wasn't supposed to happen.

"You're stressed, I didn't want to pile anything else on top. And it's gonna be fine, I can dance the Nutcracker in my sleep." He scrambles to reassure his boyfriend with a smile, but Steve doesn't look convinced. Bucky gets up off the couch and goes over to put his arms around Steve's neck, having to concentrate harder on walking than he'd anticipated. He really underestimated his capacity to drink on an empty stomach tonight, but he doesn't regret it when there's this much emotional charge flying around. "I promise, babe. It's nothing to worry about."

"Yeah, you said that about the last one, too." Steve extricates himself gently but firmly from Bucky's hold, not looking him in the eye as he addresses their friends over Bucky's shoulder. "I think I'm gonna head, sorry guys. I'm tired as hell."

"Want me to come too?" Bucky lets his hands drop limply to his sides where they've been pushed away, limbs fizzing with a sudden wave of anxiety. Is Steve mad at him? He didn't sound _mad_ but he did sound at least disappointed, and that doesn't mean he's _not_ mad. What if he hates Bucky now? There's nothing to say he _doesn't_.

Steve seems to know what he's thinking, because he squeezes Bucky's hand before shaking his head.

"Nah, I'm just gonna go to bed." He doesn't kiss Bucky before he goes to grab his shoes and jacket, though. It's not a conscious choice when Bucky trails after him, feeling the unsettled churn of panic start up in the pit of his stomach like an old enemy come to stay.

"Steve…" He reaches out to touch his boyfriend's arm when they're relatively out of their friends' earshot, around the corner right outside the front door, and Steve's shoulders heave with a deep breath before he turns around. He doesn't pull away, though. That's something.

"You were right, Buck. I can't deal with your shit on top of everything else tonight. I care, I just… I can't right now. I'm all out of energy." Steve tells him evenly, and finally leans down to peck him on the lips despite the effort it seems to take him. Bucky _hates_ himself for causing that expression, wants to cut out his tongue if it'll mean he never says _stupid stupid_ shit again. "I'm not mad at you. I just need some space."

"Okay." Bucky nods, feeling the complete opposite of okay and shoving his trembling hands in the pockets of his hoodie so Steve won't think he's guilting him into not taking care of himself. "Love you."

"Love you too." Steve twitches a tired smile before he leaves, heading off to sleep in their bed. Alone. Because Bucky's too much to handle. Again.

Bucky rests his head against the cold wood of the closed door for a minute before he forces himself upright, not bothering to hide his waver as he heads back into the apartment. His friends owe him a date with the bottle of vodka for dropping _that_ bombshell tonight, maybe they'll even let him sleep on the couch if he passes out there and there's no Steve to carry his fat ass home.

He doesn't notice he's doing it, but Bucky pinches a wad of skin on his stomach through the pocket of his hoodie as he walks back into the living room. He digs his nails into the flab and the little flash of pain turns his smile into a grimace. But it's a smile, that's the important part. Nobody can be mad at him for smiling.


	5. take the world upon your shoulders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is 1.3k longer than normal, I don't know why.
> 
> [side note: 'to rock up' is a real thing, not a typo!]

Bucky rocks up to work the next morning, unshowered and brutally hungover.

He struggles through a shower at the studio, thankful that he leaves a spare bag of his dance gear in the office for when he teaches, because he's a fucking car crash today. Nat and Sam let him crash on the couch last night after he passed out, and Sam even made him pity coffee this morning after he threw up what felt like everything he'd ever eaten in their toilet. Whether his friend pitied him because he'd pissed off his boyfriend or because he drank himself stupid because of it, Bucky didn't try to find out. Both options feel just as shitty as each other.

He needs to be lying down. Like he _really_ needs to be lying down. That's the dominant thought in his head as he gets dressed in between occasional bouts of dry-retching and having to sit down to catch his breath. He should have made himself throw up last night before he passed out. He shouldn't have drunk so much vodka in the first place. He shouldn't have upset Steve. He should stop _fucking everything up all over again_.

_Hope you got some rest x_

Bucky shoots his boyfriend a text after he manages to get himself presentable and keep a Gatorade down without wanting to puke again. It's not Steve's fault he acted like a moron, pretending to himself that he could keep reality at bay if he buried his head in the sand and didn't acknowledge that he was going to have to dance a high-profile lead again. Maybe if Bucky tries really hard then he can make it up to him and get back on his good side. Steve doesn't need more stress, and Bucky can't believe he was stupid enough to put more on him by accident. Again.

Steve doesn't reply after a couple of minutes (and the Gatorade stays down, thankfully), so Bucky forces his ass into gear and heads across the building to teach his first class of the day. Luckily he's only got the adult students until five, because he's nowhere near ready to deal with shrieking kids that are already _way_ more excited for Christmas than he ever remembers being. Also luckily, it's only a short walk to the main practice room, and he takes a moment to gulp down more sports drink before pushing through the door with a rigid smile.

The smile gets a little more genuine when he sees who's warming up at the barre, finally back from his sabbatical to Sokovia. Pietro catches sight of Bucky in the mirror and drops his leg with a noise of surprise, threading his way through the students stretching around the floor to throw his arms around Bucky's neck.

Shield Studios (because of course he kept the shitty name that had meaning only to him, he wasn't about to let them put _Barnes_ on the company, no matter how notorious it might be) bought out Pietro's contract as soon as he expressed interest in joining, as quickly as possible to maintain his visa, then promptly gave him time off while they were still setting up and establishing classes. Things at the old company fucked him up pretty badly, Bucky doesn't know even half of what really happened with Pierce and, to be honest, he doesn't want to. From what little he does know, the old man pulled a lot of abusive shit that wouldn't have worked on Bucky because he knows manipulation and abuse like the insides of his eyelids, and dropped the kid the second a less difficult prospect came along.

So the twins went back to Sokovia for a while, to visit their remaining relatives, and it seems like the time away has helped. Time to heal is pretty much the only thing Bucky can give Pietro (out of friendship and also his residual guilt about leaving him at the company when he knew what was going to happen), so he'll do as much as he can.

Pietro looks better than the last time Bucky saw him, filled out into his shoulders and a little taller now he's eating enough to grow. He's a better colour too, blood flushing to his cheeks when he sees his friend in a way Bucky studiously ignores. He doesn't know for sure if Pietro is still nursing his massive crush, but he's not blind.

"Hey!" The way Pietro hugs him, a lingering cling with his face buried in Bucky's neck, doesn’t leave much to the imagination either. Bucky lets him grab him as long as he likes, though, because he's been worried about the kid and it's a relief to see him looking better than he was. "When did you get back?"

"Saturday, five in the morning Sokovia time. I slept all of Sunday and Monday." Pietro finally lets go, smiling broadly as he pulls back. Bucky's assistant had been tasked with helping him navigate the rental system weeks ago, so the twins are finally set up in a proper apartment that suits their needs. Not sleeping on a couch every night definitely agrees with Pietro, since he doesn't have eye bags big enough to bury bodies in anymore. "How is it without me? What I've missed?"

"Well, uh, surprise! We're putting on the Nutcracker in a month!" Bucky feigns excitement, extremely sarcastically, with his widest eyes and an open-mouthed smile that looks as ridiculous as it feels. It also hurts his pounding head, but ignoring pain is something he does unconsciously, easy as breathing.  

"No, sorry. That wasn't English. I don't understand." Pietro stares at him, disbelieving and deadpan, and Bucky lets out a hollow laugh that betrays his true feelings. "When? Why?"

"Nothing to do with me, but it's happening." He raises his hands like he's backing away from the whole situation, which he wishes he could actually do because he's pretty convinced it's going to be a shitshow. "You're cast as Drosselmeyer, but it's not confirmed yet. Figured I'd check with you first and see if you'd rather be in the corps, if you needed more time or—"

"No, no. I have time, I'm good now." Bucky gives him a capital-L-Look at that hurried statement, and Pietro's lips quirk slightly. It's nice to have friends close enough to recognise your bullshit, sometimes. "Okay, I'm a little more good. But that's enough, I'm ready."

"Alright, I trust you. Remember though, this is a new company: you say if things are too much and we'll help you out." The irony of constantly telling his dancers this while completely ignoring that the standard should apply to him too isn't lost on Bucky, but he shoves the seasick guilt down into the pit of his stomach where he can ignore it.

This will all be over and things will be better by Christmas; he just needs to keep his shit together until then.

"Yes, boss." Pietro snaps off a sarcastic little salute at him and Bucky shoots him his dirtiest look. "Hey, I was going to show you. They have poster of you at my old dancing school, I visited this time. I have a picture."

He's already scrolling through his phone to find the image, but Bucky hurries to wave him off. He really doesn't want to see another picture of himself. Ever, if at all possible. He especially doesn't want to be reminded that he's kind of famous now, within arts circles, because notoriety and gossip were things he could handle but _fame_ is a whole new vice tightening around his skull.

"Nah, it's okay. I know what my ugly face looks like." He pulls his most twisted expression to make Pietro laugh before walking to the front of the room and clapping his hands for attention. "We still waiting on anyone?"

"Nope, the gang's all here." Kamala, another happy defector from their previous company, is font and centre as usual. Bucky gets her to demonstrate any specific aspects of arm movements he needs to, when his left is bad, and that reminds him that he has a get out of jail free card to baby his hangover just a little today.

He's a terrible teacher. He grits his teeth and promises himself he'll be better tomorrow as the class comes to order. He'll be better for Steve, for work, for everyone who needs him to be.

He himself doesn't enter into his thoughts as someone he should be better for, of course.

"My arm's kinda seized up today, so don't judge me when I take it easy. That's why you look after your injuries, folks." He delivers it well enough that it gets him a ripple of laughter from the class, which is a relief. Maybe he doesn't look as hungover as he feels. "Okay, we're gonna run through a couple of warm-ups and then we're starting the new choreography. We need to really rattle through this, we don't have a lot of time until opening, so keep your concentration up."

The class are exchanging vaguely uncomfortable glances by the end of his introduction, and Bucky tries his best to look like he knows what he's doing when he reassures them. He's not going to lie to his company, his friends, but it's a struggle.

"We can do this, guys. It's gonna be tough, but you're all good enough and we can make it work." He's not exactly the king of motivational speeches, so he just repeats what he tells himself before they get down to it. They'll probably hate him within a week, dancers always do. "Maximum effort, alright? First position."

They can do this. They have to, so they will, and Bucky will too. He just has to make it through to Christmas, that's what he keeps telling himself.

He has to.

 

_Bucky's fingers are colder than the drink in his hand. Maybe they've just gone numb._

_All his limbs seem to have gone numb, and he tries to tell himself it's just exhaustion as he swallows another gulp of vodka soda against his dry mouth. Maybe it's the pills, the speed he only intended to be on to get through the run of shows but he took twice today to stop his hands shaking. He's been behind a pane of glass since about halfway through the run, and by now it feels like he's got nothing left in the tank at all. He lets his head fall back against the wall he's leaning on and closes his eyes, just for a minute._

_The Christmas party is in full swing around him, jingly music ringing through the bar over the buzz of conversation and laughter coming from a company of increasingly-drunk dancers. They've rented out the whole place for the end of year party, celebrating the end of the run and the holiday season all at once, and Bucky should be having fun right now. He should be hitting on whoever he hasn't slept with yet and getting shots in at the bar, doing coke in the bathroom and cutting loose after a hard year. He shouldn't be worrying about the way he can feel his stomach digging into the waistband of his jeans._

_The shows are over. He's at his lowest weight right at the end of a run, he's in great shape and he's tiny, so why does he feel like the wall he's leaning on his bowing beneath his bulk? Why does his chest hurt whenever he thinks about what the hell he's going to do with his time off, about going home for Christmas, about spending time with his parents and what his mother is going to say about—_

_Bucky's legs give out to the numbness, and he slides down the wall to land on the hard floor with a thump. The pain in his chest is more intense now, deep and pulling like the drop at the top of a rollercoaster over and over and—_

_He went on a rollercoaster once. Stayed with some friends for a weekend while he was home from school for the summer break. Mama threw out all his clothes when he was away, and when he came home and looked in the empty closet it was that sick, falling feeling over and over and—_

_"Bucky?"_

_He's sitting on the floor in a bar. He's being weak. He can't—_

_"I can't breathe. I can't..." He chokes out, digging his fingers into his scalp to try and hold himself together. He's messing his hair up. People are looking at him. His friends are looking at him. He's being embarrassing he's fucking up he's going to get fired he's going to disappoint—_

_"Come on." Natasha's tiny, strong hands are grabbing him under the arms, pulling him up off the floor onto his jelly legs. She leans close so she can keep her voice low as she starts pulling Bucky towards the back exit. "Maria's right there, keep it together or she's going to notice."_

_"Is he okay?" Sam sounds concerned as they pass by him at the pool table. Bucky doesn't blame him, the whole company only know him as a guy who plays as hard as he works and a lot of them hate him for it. Seeing Bucky 'notorious slut' Barnes actually have an emotion must be almost as unsettling as it is for him to feel one._

_He should be having fun right now. He should be smiling. He's fucking up and everyone can see and the rollercoaster swoop is happening in his chest again and he's falling down and down and—_

_"Just had a little too much to drink." They sound like they're underwater, and Bucky's knees nearly buckle before Natasha yanks him upright again. "I'm gonna take him to get some air."_

_Then they're outside, and the cold air hits him along with the sudden quiet as the bar door shuts behind them. Natasha is a blur of red hair through his teary eyes, and it's all too much like Novosibirsk and losing everything. Something snaps, and he just can't anymore._

_"I can't do this, Nat." Bucky braces himself against the wall, gasping for air as he starts shaking all over. He wants to go home. He never wants to go home again. He doesn't want to feel anything anymore. "I can't. I feel like I'm gonna break apart."_

_"You're going to be fine." Her hands are steady on his shoulders, squeezing firm in an attempt to ground him. "It's a panic attack, just try to breathe."_

_"No! I mean this, the company and doing this over and over and…" He trails off and sucks in a laboured breath, lungs burning and tears now streaming unchecked down his cheeks. "I want it to stop, I don't wanna be this anymore. I don't wanna be me."_

_He can't see Natasha's expression, but she's close enough that he can feel the way she freezes. She remembers the roof in Novosibirsk too, probably clearer than he does._

_She gets him home, Bucky doesn't remember how. He doesn't remember much of the night either, but he remembers watching the sunrise through bleary, swollen eyes and feeling utterly hopeless. He knows things will never get better, not while he's still in his skin. Not while he's him._

_First day back after the holiday break, they have a new pianist in the studio. He smiles at Bucky and follows him outside to ask him awkwardly on a date and everything changes. Everything._

 

By the time he's finished teaching at six, Bucky has a splitting headache and could really use a stiff drink. It's the only thing likely to finally kill this hideous hangover, and he's sort of relieved that Steve isn't likely to be home for another couple of hours. If they're going to argue, Bucky hasn't had a text from him all day and he _knows_ he fucked up so he figures they're going to, then he'd like to have something to take the edge off first.

He doesn't remember how much vodka is left in the freezer after his frequent _taking the edge off_ lately. It'll have to be enough.

Except that when he gets through the door, the first thing Bucky sees are Steve's hipster boots sitting neatly by the shoe rack where he always leaves them. Anxiety spikes through him for a second, because he thought he had time to _prepare_ , but then the muscle memory peters out and he relaxes as his body remembers it's _Steve_ he's dealing with. The TV is playing at a low volume further into the apartment, so Bucky bites the bullet and walks in to get this over with.

"Hey." Bucky sets his bag down on the floor slowly, not sure if he's about to get yelled at. He knows Steve wouldn't just launch into it, in fact they rarely fight because they know it gets them nowhere, but all his learned behaviour means his heart rate picks up again all the same. He stands in the living room doorway nervously, arms folded around his waist in his standard self-defence pose. "You didn't answer my texts."

"I'm sorry I was a jerk." Steve looks up despondently from where he's sitting on the couch, tucked into the corner with his knees pulled up to his chest. He's wearing the worn old sweatpants he sleeps in, looks like he hasn't moved all day, and his expression looks so drawn and tired that Bucky instantly forgets his worry about being shouted at in favour of concern.

"You weren't a jerk." He sits down next to his boyfriend, habitually leaving enough distance between them that if he is about to get in trouble, he's got time to bail. Clint would probably have a few things to say about the fact Bucky's thinking like this again after so long without falling into these patterns, but he pushes that voice away as hard as he can to concentrate. "I should've told you about the show before, you were right to not deal with it that second."

"I still shouldn't have just taken off like…" Steve sighs, rubbing a hand over his eyes like he's trying to wake himself up. Bucky knows how that kind of tired feels, and it hurts his chest to see it painted all over Steve like his. "I knew you thought I was mad at you and I took off anyway. I shouldn't have done that, I've promised you not to do that."

"Baby, if I think you're mad at me because of my fucked up perception then that's my problem." Bucky rests his hand gently on Steve's back, emboldened now he's pretty sure they're not fighting. Worry for the guy he loves is winning out over fear, regardless. "You look like you didn't sleep all night."

"I was thinking about Ma and worrying I upset you and…" He huffs out a breath like he's overwhelmed, like he doesn't even know where to start. Bucky knows exactly how that feels too, and he's starting to feel uneasy about the whole situation because he doesn't know how to deal with his own feelings, let alone anyone else's. "This show, you being under pressure… I… You can't relapse over it."

"Steve—"

Steve cuts him off, suddenly insistent like he's been sitting on this all night. The sudden bubbling-up of anxiety that he usually keeps tamped down with all his reason and positive attitude and keeping his head down, swimming like a shark to survive; it rarely comes out, and when it does things must be serious. Deadly serious.

"I can't go back to you on coffee and cigarettes and getting dizzy when you stand up all the time. I can't handle you going back to sleeping for two days straight because you've run yourself into the ground." He sounds desperate, filled with all the fear and uncertainty that usually brews half-pacified under his calm surface. He grabs Bucky's hand and all Bucky can do is hold him back. "You can't do that, Buck. You can't take it and I can't take it. We can't take it, _us_."

The words don't surprise him, it's the way they're delivered. It's the pure _fear_ in Steve's voice that leaves Bucky reeling.

"I'm not gonna—"

"I can't lose you and her at the same time." Steve sounds like the words are choking him, and he crumples and Bucky catches him and pulls him into his arms like he should have done before things got this far.

So _that's_ what this is. Fuck.

"Oh baby, you're not gonna lose either of us." Bucky wraps his thin arms around Steve's huge shoulders and squeezes him tight, closing his eyes to try and block out the thoughts about what a fucking moron he is that he hadn't noticed how worn-down Steve has become. He's such a selfish asshole, he knows that. "Me and your Ma aren't going anywhere. I'm not gonna relapse over this show, she's gonna get through chemo and out the other side, it's all gonna be okay. I know it fucking sucks right now, but we're not gonna go back to how it was."

"Promise?" Steve exhales shakily against Bucky's neck. They've already had this conversation, as recently as last night, and Bucky figures they'll probably have it a couple more times before this ordeal is over. He needs to be frequently reassured when he's anxious and Steve always comes through, he thinks the least he can do is return the favour.

"I promise. I love you, and I promise I'm not gonna make this shit any harder on you. Let me worry about me for a change." The words seem to sink in and Steve breathes a little easier in his arms. Bucky takes a deep breath of his own and tries to get his head straight, because he needs to be the strong one right now. What does Steve do when he's depressed? How can he fake his way through this? "Did you eat today?"

"That's my line." Steve croaks, trying to get himself under some semblance of control now he's got enough reassurance to claw himself back onto his rickety stilts of coping. "Nah, I called in sick to work and kinda just… I just ran out of energy today."

"Alright, that's something we can do right now." Bucky squeezes him again and then pulls back, just enough to see if Steve still needs to hold him. His boyfriend straightens up a little though, so he figures it's okay to let go and stand up. "I'll make food and then you're gonna get some sleep, okay? And tomorrow I'll go check on your Mom, you need a day off."

Steve looks uneasy at the prospect of time off, and Bucky smiles sadly because that's a little close for comfort. But he knows this is the edge of the drain they're circling here, the start of burnout, and he's not about to let Steve sink if he can help it. Especially when he's looking at Bucky like he's _sorry_ again, like he thinks he's done something wrong by having a totally justifiable feeling.

(Again, the irony isn't _totally_ lost on Bucky that his standards for people he cares about are totally different from those he holds himself to, but he tries not to think about it.)

"I'm sorry, Buck. You know I trust you, it's just…"

"Babe, I'm surprised you're still on your feet right now with this whole thing. You don't have to apologise for getting nervous." Bucky leans down and cups his face, pressing a firm kiss to his forehead before looking him dead in the eye and telling him straight. "You're doing so well. You're dealing with a fuckload of shit and you're working so hard. I'm so fucking proud of you."

Steve lets out a stuttered sound, like a sob he won't allow to form, and Bucky lets his lips linger on his forehead again because he just wants to make Steve feel better. Desperately. And he has no idea how to do that because his head is too stuck up his own ass. Of course Steve is worried about him, on _top_ of everything else, because he knows Bucky can't keep his shit together.

"Now will you let me take care of you?" He smiles when he pulls away, as encouraging as he can be. He's getting good at talking other people into thinking things are going to be okay when he doesn't feel like that himself. "For once?"

"Not my style." Steve laughs, watery and weak but _trying_. Bucky's so proud of him he could fucking burst, wonders why the hell _he_ can't be that brave. Wonders why he can't try that hard and just stop being so goddamn stupid all the time.

In the kitchen, having already delivered Steve a bottle of water because god knows if he's even drunk anything all day, Bucky leans his head against the familiar cold surface of the refrigerator and tries to breathe. He just needs to hang on until Christmas, he just needs to get through this show and keep it together at home for Steve and make sure he doesn't fuck up with food and be professional in meetings and put on a good face in the fucking documentary that's going to start filming soon and be patient with his classes and eat and eat and…

And there's that rollercoaster feeling again, the swoop down and down and down. But Steve is finally starting to calm down in the living room and Bucky needs to make him something to eat, and he doesn't have _time_ to break down. He can't. He _can't_.

The vodka burns his throat, ice-cold straight from the bottle, and Bucky relishes the feeling even as he tries not to cough. He'll be fine, he has to be, he just has to make it until Christmas.


	6. Smile

Bucky fucking hates phsyicals.

"Can I go on backwards?" He asks, hesitantly, when it comes to the part of the exam he dreads more than anything else. He had a nightmare about being weighed last night, and this morning he's water-loaded out of habit rather than being sure it's a necessity (he can't have lost that much, he hasn't been actively dieting or purging, it's just paranoia that he's going to get in _trouble_ if he's not heavy enough for them). His stomach feels bloated and obvious as the doctor shoots him a concerned look, and he wishes he was still wearing Steve's thick hoodie so he could hide.

He doesn't want to know how much he weighs, not when he's right on the edge of a relapse and he can feel himself hanging by a thread. It would feel so good to just let himself fall, but Bucky grits his teeth and clings onto good behaviour with his fingernails because he promised Steve. He _promised_.

"Are you—"

"Nah, it just stops me obsessing over the numbers." Bucky tries his most winning smile, the one that usually fools people, and hopes it passes for genuine. He'd been open about his disorder with the company doctor in the beginning, when he'd been freshly in recovery and maintaining his weight seemed like a good thing rather than a noose around his neck, and by now he kind of wishes he hadn't been so cocky. As if _he_ could stay good. "I don't weigh myself anymore and I'd rather not know."

"I wish more of them were like you." The doctor nods, apparently reassured, and Bucky steps on the scale backwards with relief. Anxiety keeps him from looking at the doctor's face while she takes a note of his weight, but the tone of her voice as she sits back down is enough to send ice shooting through his gut. "How are your food issues lately?"

"Uh, good. I mean, y'know, better." He steps off the scale quickly, cursing himself for not weighing down his pockets like he used to before physicals. Stupid not to take more precautions, what was he thinking? If he gets benched before this show then he's going to be in _so much trouble_. "I see a therapist once a week, I'm not having any problems right now."

"Restricting your intake? Throwing up? Laxative abuse?" It's just a standard checklist she's running through, but it makes Bucky start to sweat anyway. He doesn't even like talking about this stuff in the abstract, let alone to someone who has to rubber-stamp him to keep dancing.

"Nah, nothing like that. I've been on the straight and narrow for like… a year and a half now."

"That's great to hear." She clicks through a few options on her computer, and Bucky just hopes they're good. "I'd recommend you up your food intake by a few hundred calories a day, just to be on the safe side, especially working up to a run of shows. I won't give you the numbers, but it'd be easy for you to lose a little weight and slide into the red right now. So, just in case."

"I can do that." Bucky nods with the same winning smile. As if he's going to up his fucking food intake when he's not in the danger zone. If he's normal then he's _fine_.

Unsurprisingly, the doctor clears Bucky for the show without making any further provisions on his behaviour. He takes what feels like the longest piss of his life as soon as he gets out of the exam room; he'd forgotten what it felt like to water-load for weight and then sit there trying to look casual while he felt like a balloon about to burst. Thor has cleared his afternoon schedule so he can go across town and check on Steve's mom without having to rush there and back, and Bucky's grateful for it because he's already tired as shit when he gets on the subway.

Did he eat today? He must have, Steve was in the apartment this morning so he wouldn't have just skipped breakfast. But then he was anxious about being weighed so…  

Bucky can't remember, so he checks on the app he uses to track his calories these days. When he first got out of treatment, everything went on the chart on the fridge so he was accountable to someone else if there was a problem. But now it's all private, just him and his screen in the rattling subway carriage as he gets distracted trying out different food combinations to see how he can maximise his protein for the minimum calories (because he _didn't_ eat today, it turns out). He _knows_ how to do that, of course, but for some reason Bucky finds it comforting to fiddle around with the numbers and watch them go down and down and down on the little chart. It's the same reason he's subscribed to emails about recipes for weight loss and articles about the latest fat-burning superfoods. He knows it all already, it's just somehow comforting, like listening to his favourite album when he can't sleep.

Scrolling back through the tracker, he can't believe some of the things he's let himself eat over the past few months. Birthday cake, ice cream, McDonald's, takeout. All without purging it back up, all kept down and all the fat and grease and carbs just allowed to swim around his body and stick to his gut like—

Bucky swallows hard against the sudden wave of empty nausea and closes the app, bringing up Candy Crush instead. He doesn't need to think about his shitty diet in the past now, it's all about looking forward and being _good_.

Whatever _good_ means on that particular day, because at the moment he's struggling to remember which way is up when it comes to food.

 

_"Have you been good?"_

_He dreads the question, wakes up sweating in the middle of the night with it ringing in his ears, because the meaning totally depends on the person asking. Good isn't real, it's something he learned to fake long before he hit seventeen and the latest growth spurt and his shoulders started to bulk out._

_If the school doctor is asking, then good means he's been eating back his exercise calories with a little extra on top (we're going to up your calorie intake by a few hundred a day, they said, and that's when he'd learned how to hide food up his sleeves and in his pockets at dinner so he could dump it at the first opportunity)._

_If his sister is asking, good means eating back his exercise calories and cutting loose on top (beer, candy, chips, he doesn't know how Becky puts them in her mouth without feeling sick, because the last time he felt such euphoria from junk his head span and he'd caught himself eating and eating until he couldn't stop)._

_If Mama is asking, worst of all, then good means keeping his weight as low as possible. He'll never become principal with flab._

_Luckily for Bucky (in some ways), the answer he gives always needs to be the same no matter who's asking the question. He can play a role, after all, it's what he's been training for his whole life._

_"Yes." With a big, fat smile._

 

"Hey, Mom." Bucky calls out when he lets himself into the apartment, not too loudly in case Sarah is asleep.

"In the kitchen, sweetheart." She calls back, and Bucky toes his shoes off dutifully by the door before he carries on inside. He's never got on the wrong side of her 'no shoes in the house' rule, but he's driven Steve crazy with it at their place more than once. He doesn't intend to piss off a Rogers today.

It wasn't hard to tell when Steve told her about Bucky's family, and not just because neither of the Rogers can keep their emotions off their faces for shit. The first time Bucky came to visit after he got out of treatment, Sarah had wrapped him in a firm, bony hug that Bucky knew well from the right side of pity, and told him he should call her _Mom_ from then on if he wanted.

Bucky _loves_ having a mom who's kind to him. He _loves_ popping over without calling first, being chided about the hours he's working, and fed all the cups of tea he could ever drink whether he wants them or not. He loves sending her all the goofy pictures of Steve that he wouldn't spam their friends with, and it makes him ridiculously happy to get snaps from the family photo album in return. It's hard to shake the feeling that she's just waiting for him to slip up so she can lay into him, but Bucky at least logically knows that's just a hangover from dealing with his own mother.

Seeing her sick has been awful, he can't imagine how it feels for Steve. He needs to make more time to come to the run-down little apartment, get himself over to do some chores and help out the way Steve does. Bucky doesn't know where the hell he'd find that time, since he barely has enough to sleep and eat as it is, but he'll just have to carve it out somewhere. He can't let her down, he can't let either of them down.

"Hi love." Sarah looks smaller than the last time he saw her, the knobs of her bird-boned shoulders sticking through her thick cardigan when she looks back at him from the sink. Bucky smiles and pushes out an exaggerated sigh of exasperation as he walks in, pulling her gently away from the sink and the soap suds clinging to her hands.

"What the hell are you doing dishes for? You're supposed to be getting some rest." He grabs the nearest dishtowel and dries her hands off, careful with the purple IV marks in her papery skin. "Don't make me tell Steve on you."

"He's never going to be big enough to tell me what to do." Sarah laughs, wearier and fainter, somehow older than the last time Bucky heard it, but still there as clear as day. "Is my boy taking care of you?"

"I'm big and ugly enough to take care of myself, Ma."

"Shut your face and let me look at you." Sarah looks him over and nods approvingly before pulling him into a weak squeeze of a hug. "Well, at least you're not looking too skinny."

Bucky's mouth goes dry.

He hugs Sarah back and rests his cheek on her thinning hair, head spinning so much for a moment that he has to close his eyes. She tells _Steve_ he's too skinny, tries to feed that big hunk of muscle up with stews and pies and carbs that stick to your ribs. If she thinks Bucky isn't too skinny, then how big has he really managed to get? How much weight has he put on without even noticing?

He should have looked at the scale during his physical. He should have done damage assessment. As it is, he's just going to have to do damage control blind.

"I, uh, I brought you some presents." Bucky forces a sunny smile when he pulls back, going for his default because Sarah hasn't known him long enough to know immediately when he's faking. He guides her into a chair at the clunky old kitchen table and takes off his backpack, hunting around in it for the things he actually remembered to bring with him this time.

"So, Pietro's sister's started knitting lately and she wanted to make you something." The hat he removes carefully from its paper bag and hands to Sarah is lumpy, a mixture of fluffy, shiny green and blue wool that looks like it's half crocheted. Pietro is very, very proud of the blue and silver one he wears every day without fail, mainly because it's the first therapeutic activity that his sister has willingly stuck to and enjoyed.

"You don't have to wear it." He points out, quickly. Although even Steve wears his monstrous rainbow scarf with his fashionable hipster outfits, so he's pretty sure Maximoff bespoke knitwear counts as ugly-cute rather than just plain ugly.

"That's so sweet, bless her." Sarah beams at the hat, smoothing out the fluff and looking genuinely pleased with it. Typical Rogers. "How is she?"

"Doing better. They just got back from Sokovia and Pietro says she's actually leaving the house every day now." Sarah's kept updated on everything going on with the company and dancers, of course, despite the fact she strenuously denies she's ever gossiped a day in her life.

"And how's Steve?" She raises her eyebrows at Bucky in an uncanny echo of her son's _no bullshit_ face. It's always slightly weird to see where Steve got his expressions from so clearly, but Bucky kind of likes it all the same, even despite the anxious bubbling of his stomach now he's worrying about his size again. Seeing echoes kind of makes him feel like he's part of a family, for once. "Don't give me that look, I knew his bullshit face before he did. How's he really doing?"

"He's worried about you, kinda depressed about the whole thing. Nothing I wouldn't expect." He gently omits the part about the calling in sick to work and not sleeping, because he doesn't need them _both_ worrying themselves to death. "It's not just you, he worries about me all the time even when he doesn't need to."

"Jury's out on that one, I think." Sarah pats his arm with her bony hand, nothing frail about her despite her weakness. "If he starts getting very depressed like before—"

"Don't worry about him, okay? I got him." Bucky promises her, actually feeling confident that he's telling the truth when he says it. He's not going to let anything going on with him affect Steve, not when his boyfriend is already under so much pressure, and his ability to squash his problems down into a little ball in his gut where nobody can see them is one thing he doesn't doubt.

"I'm always going to worry, love. He's my boy." Sarah smiles, somewhat sadly, and Bucky feels like he's out of his depth for a long, dropping second.

He wonders if his mom ever worried about him, if she ever worries about him now they don't speak, or if she only ever worried about the next role he was dancing.

There's that nausea again. He's just glad his stomach is empty.

"I got you this, too." He clears his throat, shaking his head slightly to try and throw the thought away as he digs further into his backpack. He's glad he left this in its plastic wrapping, since he'd pretty much shoved his sweaty dance gear straight in there in an effort to get out of the studio as quickly as possible. "I ordered it a while ago but it just came back in stock, so."

Bucky opens up the plastic shipping bag and hands Sarah the t-shirt, nervous until she unfolds it enough to see the writing and bursts out laughing. It's more robust than the last, dry laugh he'd heard from her, something like the real belly laugh Steve's talked about growing up with when things improved after his Dad passed. It makes Bucky forget how fat he is, just for a second.

"Oh, that's wonderful." Sarah giggles, smoothing the t-shirt out over the table so she can see the _FUCK CANCER_ slogan in all its glory. "I need to wear this to chemo on Wednesday, my old ladies will love me."

"You should put it on now, I'll take a picture." Bucky grins when she starts unbuttoning her cardigan immediately. Head first without hesitation, just like her son. "Then I'll do your dishes while you lay down for a while, okay?"

"I might be fighting some bastard cells, but I can do my own fuckin' dishes." Sarah grumbles, thankfully not getting offended when Bucky reaches out to help her pull the t-shirt down over her blouse when her arms are stiff. He intentionally got it a size too big because she's half-puffy, half-skinny with the treatment, and he's pleased to see it fits well enough over something else to keep her warm.

"I know, Ma. Just let me do it so our boy doesn't kill me, huh?" He offers his hand with his _best_ smile, and Sarah lets him help her up and tucks herself under his arm so they can take a selfie with the shirt in pride of place. Bucky even gets his face in the shot, no matter how bloated and disgusting he feels, because Steve loves to get a rare picture of him and he could use the boost right now.

Sarah lets him help her to bed, so she must be a hell of a lot more wiped out than she's letting on. Bucky hangs up her cardigan and the t-shirt for her just the way she likes, leaves her a glass of water and her painkillers on the nightstand if she needs them. He takes a minute in the kitchen to get himself together, quietly pressing his forehead against the counter and taking deep breaths to try and quiet his churning stomach down. Thor's flask is in his backpack, left there from the last time Bucky needed to kill a hangover on short notice, and he drains it before he starts cleaning up.

It's autopilot to clean the rest of the apartment, comforting to replace the stale smell of sickness with bleach and blandness. He does everything short of vacuuming, because he doesn't want to wake Sarah up, and then boils some potatoes and leaves them on a covered plate ready to microwave for when she wakes up. Taste has been on the fritz for her since she started treatment, and it's one way Bucky's actually been helpful to figure out foods she can still find palatable. He leaves the place spotless and a note on the kitchen table to make her laugh when she finds it. He doesn't wake her when he leaves, just sends her a text she can find when she's ready.

Bucky gets around the corner from the apartment, ducks into an alley between a Starbucks and a rundown bookstore, and crouches down behind a dumpster to hide as he ties his hair back with shaking hands. His fingers go easy down his throat, the chunky vomit burns hard on its way up, and Bucky feels oddly detached from it all. He's not skinny, he's not at a dangerous weight, he's _fine_. It's like he's watching himself fuck up from a long way off and isn't all that surprised about it. His stomach is pretty empty, but it still feels like it takes a lifetime to get everything up in the frigid air and threat of being discovered. He shouldn't, he shouldn't, but he can't stop himself.

When it's all gone, when he's empty, he feels better for the first time in a while. Everyone needs medicine, and once he gets a drink in him he'll feel fucking _great_ now. One time isn't a relapse, that's what he tells himself as he straightens up and pops his neck, stumbles out of the alley to get home and smile for his boyfriend. It's just one time, he's still _good_. He's still _fine_.

He feels better, he can smile easy now.


	7. Crutch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, this part went through a lot of restructuring. 
> 
> To make up for it, here's my definitive Steve/Bucky song for this verse: [SHINE](https://youtu.be/hXTAn4ELEwM)

"So… I really need to not do that again."

Bucky has his knees pulled up to his chest, curled up in his most defensive position in Clint's office and not trying to hide his distress. He'd made the appointment in a hurry, and Clint had no qualms moving some things around to fit him in because he's been skipping their sessions for a while now. Things seem to have gone downhill just as quickly as he'd feared they could during that time, if the incident Bucky's just relayed is any indication.

"Relapse is part of recovery, you know that." Clint feels like he should pull his punches today, which is something he doesn't usually do with Bucky because it doesn't help him open up. The fact he's got the urge to now is worrying him about as much as the defeated look of his patient is.

"I promised Steve I wouldn't." His tone isn't resolved or even bitter, it's just… weary. That's extremely worrying, and Clint doesn't like the way any of this is shaking out. "So I can't. I don't have time to, anyway. With the show and Sarah and the fucking _documentary_ they're making me shoot… I don't have time to relapse."

"It's not really something you can schedule, dude." Clint points out gently. Bucky just shakes his head and doesn't say anything else. "How've you been doing since then? Have you been trying to control your weight again?"

"I haven't _done_ anything. I've been thinking about it a lot. Like… obsessively." He admits, worrying the sleeve of his sweater between nervous fingers and not looking at Clint as he says it. He starts again and stops himself, closing his eyes as his face creases up in regret, maybe guilt. "It's like how I used to be, before treatment. I can't look at food without thinking about how many calories are in it, how it'd feel to have it in my mouth and swallow it. I… When I got out of treatment I was like wow, I have so much space in my head when I'm not thinking about all that shit. Now it's like I can't think about anything else again."

"Are you still eating?" It needs to be clarified while Bucky's being candid, Clint knows how quickly starvation can create huge problems and how slick his patient can be about lying if he's in the mood.

The clock on the dingy beige wall of his office keeps counting down their time together, the window of opportunity to intervene getting relentlessly smaller and smaller. The reedy morning sunlight weaving in through the window to their left serves to highlight the pallor of his patient's skin, the angles of his elbows and cheekbones that make him look sharp, wary and tired under scrutiny. He doesn't look like he's lost weight, Clint assesses, but then Bucky would know how to hide it if he had. There's a delicate dance of lies and truth playing out here, and Clint's never been light on his feet.

"I'm eating. It's a struggle to not eat _everything_." This is Bucky as open as he's ever been, trying so, so hard not to relapse. It's tough to catch himself again once he's already started to fall. "I guess I've been restricting a little, just to try and keep from bingeing."

"Define 'a little'." Clint's not stupid, he knows all the verbal tricks Bucky can't seem to help using to wriggle his way around actually admitting to anything he might be doing _wrong_. "Did you eat today?"

"I… To be honest, I'm way too hungover to think about eating." The sheepish little smile gives him pause, the way it's tinged with embarrassment, shame maybe. There might as well be a red flag popping up over Bucky's head for how clearly Clint can read him.

"That's the second time you've been hungover in here lately." Clint points out, being tactful enough not to blurt out _it's Tuesday, dude_ , even though he's thinking it. "Been drinking a lot?"

"Not a lot. Just… things are stressful, y'know? Sometimes it helps to take the edge off." He shrugs, careful. Too careful for it to be honest. Clint makes a giant note on his pad, because things are so far into the realm of _not good_ right now that even he's surprised how fast they've taken a turn for the worse.

"Are you hiding your drinking from people? Drinking alone?"

"No." Uneasy. That's a yes, then. But they've been through this song and dance before, and the last thing Clint wants is to have Bucky storming out of his office before he's had a chance to actually do anything to help, so he gives Bucky a pointed look but lets the lie slide.

"Just be careful about drinking in response to stress, alright? Eating disorders are often co-morbid with substance abuse for a reason, because your reactions to stress are ten shades of messed up. Don't let it get out of hand." Wildly unprofessional? Sure. He really needs to stop seeing himself in Bucky, it's getting in the way of this being an effective doctor-patient relationship. "From what you're saying, I think you'd benefit from medication. Something to make your anxiety less intense so you don't obsess over things so much."

"Those things make you put on weight." Bucky shakes his head, because he's looked up the side effects online every time they're offered and it's always there, front and centre. It's not like it's the first time Clint's tried to medicate him, it comes up plenty in their sessions. "You keep suggesting it and I'm gonna keep saying no."

"I _really think_ it'd help you." Clint repeats, stressing the point. He knows he needs to maintain a certain degree of emotional distance from his patients, but _goddamn_ Bucky deserves something to go right for once in his life. "You don't have to be on it forever, but you're going through a really stressful time right now and it might help you cope."

"My Mom always said medication was a crutch."

And doesn't Bucky remember that, the summer before he was quite old enough to lie properly and the school shrink sent him home for the summer break with the anti-depressants she'd been able to prescribe him _in loco parentis_. The way the plastic bottle rattled when it hit the wall, the way his glass of water had followed and smashed and Mama was holding the glass in her long fingers and…

He remembered that in treatment. He'd blocked a lot of things out until then.

"Bucky." Clint brings him back gently, getting his attention from where he'd zoned out into the past. "Medication _is_ a crutch. Crutches help us keep moving when otherwise we wouldn't be able to. They're not an admission of weakness, they're necessary for your injury to heal."

Well, shit. He can't argue with the logic, even if he wants to.

"It… Not forever." Bucky acquiesces, slowly, and Clint tries to keep the relief off his face. "Just until Christmas."

"That's a great start." He knows he shouldn't talk to Bucky like that, knows exactly how his patient reacts to praise and judgement and his fawn responses, but he also has to prioritise keeping the kid alive. Bucky smiles cautiously at the positive response, and Clint can't bring himself to feel guilty about it. "I think reducing your anxiety is going to make a lot of things easier for you to handle, which will definitely make it easier for you not to relapse. Stress is a huge issue with your disorder, and if we can't reduce it then we've gotta help you cope with it."

"And meds will do that."

"No guarantees, but I think they could really help." Clint smiles, encouraging Bucky to return a more muted version. He's clearly nervous about the whole thing, for reasons beyond an indefinite possibility of weight gain, and isn't forthcoming with why. As usual. "Better than drinking your way around anxiety, at least."

Clint draws a line under the conversation on his pad when Bucky nods vaguely and hunches his shoulders further, because experience tells him he's probably hit the limit of being able to usefully push his patient's boundaries today. Better to move on while he's ahead and keep the conversation moving, try and put out some smaller fires while he has the chance.

"Tell me about the documentary. How are you gonna feel about being on camera?"

"You know how I feel about being on camera." Bucky grumbles, twisting his fingers together and wishing he could figure out which magic wand he needs his therapist to wave to get him all better. Maybe that's medication, but he doesn't want it to be. "It's because of that fucking video. Some British journalist, y'know the one who does those documentaries where she goes and stays with nutjobs for a week or something?"

"You're one of her nutjobs now, huh?"

"The _board_ —" he doesn't put air quotes around it, but his derisive tone is enough to let Clint know what he thinks of their opinion on the matter "—seem to think it's gonna be an advert for the company, help launch us and shit. That's why they talked me into doing it. So I've gotta be on my best behaviour."

"I get the feeling you don't enjoy being on your best behaviour." It sounds like a fucking awful idea, from Clint's perspective. Bucky hates being on camera, hates the whole existence of the viral video that made him famous, and even the suggestion of _good_ and _bad_ behaviour in a situation ramps his anxiety up to eleven. This could totally fuck him up on top of the show, so Clint just hopes the medication helps before things get too out of hand.

"Who likes behaving, doc?" The quip offers Bucky a route out of his anxiety, a way to dodge more intense conversation, and his body language changes accordingly. Clint can tell the minute he stops being honest, the way he uncurls his posture and leans back in his chair in a pantomime of relaxation, the breezy smile that doesn't meet his eyes. "As long as it's not all strippers and blow, I think I'll manage."

 _Yeah_ , Clint thinks, _because those are the things you need to worry about_.

Bucky leaves the session with prescriptions for Prozac and Valium, the former to be taken daily and the latter only when he feels like he needs it. He considers telling Steve he's taking medication, picturing the worried twist of his mouth, the concern that Bucky's not doing as well as he's trying to make out, the extra pressure that his boyfriend doesn't need. He considers all that in the pharmacy, weighs it up on the way home, and then shoves the pill bottles into the back of medicine cabinet and shuts it decisively.

Steve doesn't need to shoulder any more of his ever-increasing weight. Bucky can carry it on his own.  

 

"Fu-uck." Steve groans low in his chest, a growl he doesn't try and hold back as he sinks deep into Bucky. It's the last night before Steve moves back in with his Mom, so they've both taken the evening off and made the most of it. They've been at this for a while, the kind of slow, languid sex that drives Steve out of his mind. "Sure you can hold your legs up like that?"

"The longer you talk, the less time I can hold 'em there." Bucky kicks Steve in the back of the head lightly with his heel, folded up pretty much double under his boyfriend and not breaking a sweat for it. It's not even much of a stretch after he's been dancing all day, and Steve gets off on it so he'll be as bendy as he likes. "Unless you want me to put my legs behind my head? That wouldn't be too diff—"

Steve makes a wounded sound and finally loses it, thrusting into Bucky hard and fast with his big hands tight enough to bruise as they hold his hips in place. Bucky laughs around a moan and just hangs on for the ride, he always loves it when Steve's  _gone_ for him like this. It doesn't take long for them to finish once Steve's off the leash, so worked up from all the _slow and gentle_ that the _rough and fast_ does them in within minutes. Not that either of them are complaining as they collapse in a sweaty heap, sticky and disgusting and totally happy about it.

"Can you really put your legs over your head?" is the first thing Steve comes out with, as soon as he's caught his breath enough to speak. Bucky rolls his eyes and smacks his arm fondly, wriggling out from under his big dumb boyfriend so he can reach his smokes on the nightstand, sitting there next to the big, pump-action bottle of lube Steve had received as an extremely-inappropriate birthday present from anonymous parties probably named _Sam_.

Extremely inappropriate but extremely useful, of course. Bucky should really send Sam a thank you card.

"Yeah, if I'm warmed up. You little pervert." He tucks some rogue hair, curled with sweat, behind his ear before lighting a cigarette. He's supposed to be quitting, as always, but nicotine gum just doesn't cut it after being fucked through the mattress. "I don't get why bendy sex is hot, it's just stretching."

"Ohh, my unbelievable talents are _so_ mundane, look at me." Steve does a frankly offensive imitation of his boyfriend and dodges Bucky's attempt to smack him again with a giggle. "C'mon, you don't think it's hot when I fold you up like a pretzel and go to town?"

"I am _not_ as fattening as a pretzel." Bucky presses his hand to his chest in mock offence, mouth hanging open.

"When I twist you up like that gross zucchini pasta you like, then. You're such a weirdo." The dodge isn't as impressive this time, and Steve just laughs when Bucky makes another obnoxiously-flexible move and nearly kicks him in the chest. He grabs Bucky's bony ankle and goes to tickle the arch of his foot, but stops in his tracks when he actually gets a look at the state of it.

"Your feet are a mess, Jesus." Steve grimaces at the blisters, the bruised toes, the calluses from dance shoes that are still red hours after the pressure was removed. Bucky shrugs, because it's all standard operating procedure in the run-up to a show. If his feet weren't hurting, he wouldn't be working hard enough. "I swear Sam's were never this bad."

"I bruise easier than Sam, I guess." Wriggling his warped toes in Steve's face makes him reel back and drop Bucky's leg, grossed-out. Bucky still finds that way more amusing than he should. "I think I'm gonna talk to Stark and Coulson again, see if they'll let me split the lead with him."

"Yeah?" The naked surprise in Steve's voice should have been expected, Bucky thinks, but it's always slightly galling to be reminded that the people around him don't expect him to have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

It's not like they're _totally_ wrong, but still. He's trying. He's even agreed to drug his brain into submission, for fuck's sake.

"They'll probably say no, but it's worth a shot. It'd be a good way to start moving towards him becoming principal. Don't say anything to him yet, though." He blows out a lungful of smoke, turning away from Steve guiltily because this is horrible for his boyfriend's asthma. He usually smokes outside on the fire escape, but he's pretty sure the neighbours wouldn't appreciate him doing that naked. "It'd be better for me, too. Less likely to get overwhelmed with the whole thing if I can share the load some."

"You feel like you're gonna get overwhelmed?" It's not an accusation, asked with the same easy concern Steve always shows towards the rare moments that Bucky actually admits he's got problems when he's not in crisis. But Bucky remembers all too clearly the naked fear of _I can't lose you and her at the same time_ and knows how vital him keeping a lid on his shit really is.

"Nah, not really." It's only partly a lie, because he thinks he's actually done a pretty decent job of keeping it together until his relapse last week. Clint would probably disagree, but Bucky couldn't give a shit right now. "I'm just trying to head it off before it can start, y'know?"

"So… The antidepressants in the medicine cabinet." Steve doesn't even try and approach the subject tactfully, blurting it out and crashing into things as usual, and Bucky freezes with his smoke halfway to his lips. Steve doesn't sound mad, but the instinctive urge to cower away is strong as ever as his stomach fills with ice. "Are they prescription?"

There's that rollercoaster feeling, falling down down _down_.

"Yeah." He sucks in a quick, shaky breath and swallows hard around the sudden nauseous hunger creeping up his throat. All his words come out in a rush, like he doesn't have time to justify himself before he gets in trouble. "I'm sorry. I was gonna tell you. I don't have to take them. I'm sor—"

"Babe, chill." Steve touches his arm, warm fingers tracing over his skin patiently and snapping him out of the guilty ramble. Bucky dares to glance at his boyfriend and all his anxiety bleeds away as quickly as it built up, because Steve isn't mad. "You're not in trouble."

"I really was gonna tell you about them." Bucky finally finishes bringing the cigarette to his lips and takes a drag before reaching over to stub it out in an empty coffee mug. He's suddenly hot all over, embarrassed for getting worked up when Steve wasn't even angry with him. He feels crazy sometimes, when his brain gets ahead of him like that. "It's just… It's your last night, I didn't wanna spoil it and make it all about me again."

"You make it sound like I'm going off to war or something. I'm still gonna be around most of the time." The lack of anger in his voice is genuine, warm lips pressed to Bucky's shoulder just to drive the point home. "When did Clint give you them, today?"

"Yeah." Bucky nods, letting his shoulders drop now he's trying to find his way back to calm. He doesn't have to be on edge, he's safe with Steve. If only his stupid brain would catch up to that fact. "I don't have to take them if you think it's a bad idea."

"I think it's a great idea, Buck." Steve still sounds sincere, and despite the fact Bucky _knows_ his boyfriend isn't lying he still has to look at his face to make sure. "Are they gonna help your anxiety?"

"Supposed to. Which is supposed to stop me getting obsessive about stuff." He scratches at his wrist uncomfortably and reaches for his pack of cigarettes again. He doesn't chain smoke, not anymore, but he feels agitated right now. In the name of keeping his shit together, Bucky hasn't had a drink all day and he's suddenly antsy for one. He puts the smokes down again as soon as he picks them up, indecisive and nervy. "I hate talking about this shit, babe."

"I know. But knowing about it kinda makes me feel better about leaving you rattling around this place all on your own." _There's_ the truth, Bucky _knew_ Steve had been worrying about him coping alone. He still hasn't proven himself enough to be trusted, no matter how hard he tries. "You're gonna be stressed and it's good to know you've got something to help you with it."

"Like you said, you're not gonna be gone forever. You'll still be around." _Not at night_ , goes unspoken between them, _not at night when the nightmares come and there's nothing to turn to for comfort but the refrigerator_. Bucky shoves the thought away and pushes himself off the bed, naked and sticky and all of a sudden very conscious of the lines of his body in the lamplight. "You want a drink? I'm getting one."

"Sure." Steve catches Bucky's wrist before he can high-tail it to the kitchen, fingers loose and not grasping. The touch sends a wash of guilt over Bucky for his uncharitable thoughts. Steve doesn't want him to prove he can be trusted, he just wants Bucky to be okay. "I didn't mean to upset you, Buck. I just need to know about this stuff."

"I know, 'course you do." He forces himself not to run away, blows out a short sigh and steadies himself before turning back to his boyfriend. Steve deserves an explanation, so Bucky can handle the jittery feeling under his skin for another minute. "The school doctor put me on antidepressants when I was a teenager, my Mom found out and lost her shit. She broke stuff and… and that was the end of me taking them. I… I'm sorry I got all weird about it just now, just…"

"S'okay, I get it. Bad memories." Steve lifts Bucky's hand to kiss his wrist where he'd scratched it, and just the sight of him makes some of the ice in Bucky's chest melt. God, he's going to miss sleeping next to Steve every night. "Hurry back, bed's getting cold."

The clandestine kitchen routine is something Bucky has down pat, so he can get a lot more done in a couple of minutes than anyone would ever suspect. Tonight, that involves pouring himself way more than a double vodka, downing it, and pouring another. Then grabbing a candy bar from the cabinet that supposedly holds pots and pans (Steve must be more naïve than he thought, if he really thinks he can hide candy in this kitchen) and cramming it in his mouth while he grabs Steve a beer and tops up his drink with orange juice. He'd usually down at least a couple of drinks while he's out of sight, but he's trying to be good today. He's trying to be the guy Steve needs him to be.

His stomach is still knotted up with false hunger, screaming for processed carbs and saturated fats and the sweet ache of sugar on his teeth, so Bucky digs out a flavourless protein bar and chokes half of that down too, hoping the act of chewing and swallowing will be enough (it's never enough). He offers the other half to Steve when he wanders back into the bedroom, much to Steve's amusement.

"Gotta keep my strength up, huh?" He takes it with a snort at Bucky's cheesy eyebrow wiggle. He's a dork. Bucky fucking adores him.

"You've got plenty to do tonight. Mainly me." Bucky winks, handing Steve his beer and getting back into bed to snuggle up into his side. It's starting to get late and cold, and he's becoming uncomfortably aware of what it's going to be like when Steve isn't here overnight. Steve senses the unconscious shiver of apprehension and wraps his arm around Bucky's shoulders to pull him in close, nuzzle into his hair and breathe him in like he really is going off to war tomorrow.

This is something he has to do, but he doesn't like it one bit.

"You really are gonna be okay on your own, right?" He asks quietly, as if his plans would change if Bucky said he wasn't. Bucky's sure they would, but he'd never ask Steve to choose between him and Sarah, not when he just needs to pull himself together and she doesn't have a choice.

"Well." Bucky pulls his best smile, glad Steve can't see his eyes from this angle. He's got to stop relying on his practiced lines, the nonchalance easily tossed out when he needs an escape route, but deflecting seems necessary tonight. "The minute you're out the door it's gonna be blow, strippers, and Oreos twenty-four seven. I'll be too busy to even notice you're gone."

"Buck." Steve whines, reassured but pretending to be extremely put-out by his boyfriend's giggle and pressing the cold beer bottle to his neck to make him hiss. "C'mon."

"Alright, just the strippers." He lets out a long-suffering sigh before twisting around to kiss Steve, tasting beer on his lips and having only a moment of panic about trace carbs and calories. "I'll be fine, Steve. Promise."

"Okay." Steve smiles, just a little glimmer of trust, and Bucky takes a big gulp of his drink before he kisses him again. _Keep things light_ , he thinks against sticky lips, _do it for Steve_.

"I'll have the strippers for company, anyway."

"You're the _worst_." Steve throws himself back onto the pillows with a groan and Bucky follows him down, sticky lips and all.


	8. Caught in a Trap

"Is Nat here?"

Bucky cuts straight to the chase when Sam opens the door, looking pale and clammy and more than a little worse for wear as he braces himself against the doorframe with pale, tense knuckles.

"Nah, she's in class." The state of him makes Sam bite back whatever he was about to say and wave him into the apartment, closing the door behind them and not even trying to pretend he's not sizing up the cautious way Barnes is holding himself right now.

It's been a few days since he's seen his friend – apparently locked in meetings with the board, trying to get some actual support for the last-minute show they're trying to slap together – and Bucky doesn't seem to be doing better for the break from dancing. Sam doesn't get much of an insight these days, not with Bucky and Steve getting increasingly closed down in their mutual-suffering bullshit, but he's going to hedge his bets and say things with the administration haven't gone _well_.

"Can I nap on your couch?" Bucky presses his hand over his mouth for a second and breathes in slowly before whatever he's feeling passes. Sam's kind of worried about the fate of their rug with how green the guy's looking, but he's fairly sure he's seen him worse over the course of their friendship. "Or, like, lie down? I'll leave when I don't feel like hammered shit anymore, promise."

"Man, lie your dumb ass down. Acting like you've gotta ask." Sam prods him in the shoulder and it doesn't take any further prompting for Bucky to lower himself very gingerly down onto the couch. If it were anyone else Sam would be grabbing a bucket right now, but he's concerned the suggestion would be enough for Barnes to toss his cookies – it's not like it takes much. "The hell's wrong with you, anyway?"

"Generally, or…?" It's a weak attempt at a quip even for Bucky: veteran master of trying to hide his feelings. He grabs a cushion and bites back a groan when he has to curl up slightly to put it under his head, every movement contributing to his intense discomfort. "I kinda ate a shitload of pastries and I've never wanted to puke more in my goddamn life. But I can't puke 'cause I promised Steve. So now I'm lying on your couch trying to breathe through these fucking cramps. Basically."

Well. Give the guy points for honestly, at least.

"Well, shit." Sam's surprised enough to just shake his head. "Never expected to actually hear you _say_ that."

"I know, right?" It comes with an attempt to smile as weak as the quip, accompanied by an uncomfortable shuffle to try and take some pressure off his stomach. "Your little boy's all grown up and admitting his fuck-ups."

"Don't ever call yourself my little boy again. Please." Sam glances at his watch – not because he's trying to be an asshole but because he needs to make sure he doesn't miss too much of his cross-training schedule – and mentally shifts his day around a little to make time because he's nice like that. "How come you ate a shitload of pastries?"

He's not really the therapist type, a little better at listening than his girlfriend but still not much, but since the last time Bucky was left to his own devices in their apartment ended with a trip to the emergency room… he can't help being a little cautious.

"Another meeting with Stark and Coulson… they were the first things I could get my hands on." Bucky throws an arm over his eyes, as if even the light is causing more pressure on his abdomen. His voice is strained, and he looks in enough pain that Sam can't help wishing there was something he could do to help. "I tried to get them to split the principal part between us for Nutcracker, but they wouldn't listen to me and I got frustrated."

"You…" _That_ wasn't what he'd expected to hear, and Sam blinks in surprise as he processes the information. "Just for this show?"

"Nah. I want to move towards making you principal, period." He moves his arm so he can look Sam in the eye, make sure his friend knows he's being sincere. Sam sets his gym bag down and sits heavily on the edge of the coffee table, totally blindsided by the news. "They're not listening to me about it, but you're the best guy we've got by a mile and I don't think I wanna do this anymore. It's killing me."

"You just realise that, or…" Bucky makes a noise in his throat and gives him the finger as he lets his arm flop over his eyes again.

The apartment falls quiet as Sam takes everything in and really thinks about it. He's a fucking great dancer, he knows that, but he hadn't expected to make principal for at least a couple of years, if at all with all these traditionally handsome white boys around. He'd been braced to be passed over for Pietro – youth over experience can definitely be a thing in their world – and to hear people are actually in his corner over this…

Well, Bucky is in his corner. For now. But he's heard the lines about giving up dancing before from his friend, so he cautiously tempers his excitement. Sam hasn't got this far by leaping before he looks.

"Don't get me wrong, man. I want the job." He starts off slowly, because if Bucky can find some kind of radical honesty underneath all his protective layers then Sam can at least respond in kind. "But… I know you, and you're just as likely to turn around in six months and decide you can't live without being principal. And it's not like they wouldn't take you back in a heartbeat."

"I wouldn't do that to you." Bucky uncovers his eyes suddenly to look at Sam, squinting and seemingly stricken and guilty all at once. Sam doesn't want to make his friend feel bad… but it's not like he's lying.

"I'm just saying think about it and make sure this is what you really want before you give it up, 'cause I won't wanna give it back." He stands up again and grabs his bag, feeling the stretch in his calves from last night's late rehearsal. With the way the company is at the moment, he kind of hopes things get a little more stable before Bucky gets his shit together and makes up his mind. "It'd be hard enough for you to go through another crash and burn, let alone Steve with his mom and shit."

The words hit Bucky like a sledgehammer.

_Let alone Steve._

"I gotta get to training." This is one occasion where he could actually stand to hang around and discuss this a little longer, even if it got emotional and awkward, but with the show looming he really can't afford to. Especially not if he's low-key trying to convince the board he could be principal.  "Crash as long as you want dude, there's Pepto in the cabinet if you need some."

"Thanks." Bucky breathes out a shaky, nauseous sigh as he shifts onto his side with a lot of effort. He's clearly schooling his face as much as possible, and Sam isn't about to call him on it when he's running late. "Sam? Don't tell Steve about this?"

Same old Bucky fucking Barnes.

"Man…"

"I just don't want him to worry, okay?" He's trying super hard to look Totally Fine and it's not fooling Sam at all, but one thing Bucky's friends have learned over the past couple of years is the necessity of boundaries and not pushing it. "He doesn't need the stress."

"Your relationship is your business, man. If he asks I'm not gonna lie, but I won't tell him if he doesn't." Sam slings his bag over his shoulder and heads for the door, calling over his shoulder. "What happened to owning your fuck-ups, anyway?"

"I already did that once today, goddamn." Bucky grumbles behind him, and Sam snorts a resigned laugh as he leaves the apartment and the Barnes shitshow behind, for now.

It's always one thing or another with that guy. Sam doesn't know how Steve does it.

 

_"Productions do this all the time, there's a logical place for the swap built into the story."_

_Bucky has been trying to explain this for twenty minutes at least, and he's starting to get really frustrated. He probably shouldn't have had a fortifying drink before the meeting started, but if he hadn't he would've probably punched somebody by now._

_"It would cut the pressure from a rehearsal point of view and let us start making the transition between me and Sam as—"_

_"I'm sorry." Coulson holds his hand up delicately to stop Bucky in his tracks, pink-cheeked and irritated. "What gave you the impression there was going to be a transition?"_

_Hell no, Bucky isn't going to let this shit fly today._

_"We already discussed this. I'll be moving into more admin and teaching after this production is over." He's brought this up twice over the past week, they can't keep pretending they don't hear it over the sound of ticket money ringing up. "Sam's the logical choice after I step down as principal, he's the best and most experienced we've got."_

_"Yeah, about that." Stark is watching him with that x-ray vision again, like he can see straight into Bucky's brain and catalogue his fuck-ups from the inside out. "About you stepping down? You're not."_

_Part of Bucky really, really wishes he had a drink in his hand right now._

_"Excuse me?" This can't be happening. It feels like the floor is going to give out under his chair and he'll be sucked down down down in that rollercoaster freefall loss of control. "We talked about this, we already decided—"_

_"No,_ you _decided. We said we'd take it into consideration." Stark sounds so fucking precious about it, steepling his fingers casually as if he's talking about the weather and not Bucky's career. "Research into our ticket sales says you, Bucko, are the reason people are coming to the show. You're too valuable to be behind the scenes."_

_"There are a lot of influential people coming to this premiere. We can't waste half their time and interest on some nobody, no matter how talented he is." Coulson continues, with the kind of condescending tone that makes Bucky want to hurl and eat everything in sight at the same time. "I'm afraid it's just not the right time for you to retire."_

_"There's the company launch, the Carter documentary in the pipeline, then we've got a whole bunch of publicity lined up for you between the next show going into production and the documentary release." Stark seems very pleased with himself, but he's still watching Bucky's reactions like a hawk. He's suspicious about something, and it makes Bucky feel see-through. "Seems like it'll do the festival circuit easy."_

_"I thought that was a TV thing. And what next show?" Bucky feels completely out of his depth suddenly, like he's trying frantically to signal for help and people are just waving back as if he's not drowning. His knuckles have gone white around his folder and he's giving himself papercuts but they're not doing anything to ground him. "Look, I don't want to be some kind of celebrity, the whole point of this was that—"_

_"The whole point of this is to make enough money to keep the company going." Coulson explains, like he's talking to a small child. He sounds like Bucky's mother does, in the back of his mind when he's having a really terrible day. "You want to keep your reduced-fee classes, don't you? It's not like we're asking you to do something you can't do."_

_"I…" Bucky's bony shoulders drop as he closes his mouth and swallows, looking down at the table as he shakes his head._

_He thinks about the kids he teaches, about the two Peters and how one has just lost his mom and the only time he'd leave the house for weeks after was for dance class, about how neither of them can pay the fees as it is and Bucky and Maria made up some bullshit scholarships so they could stay. He thinks about Sam and how he's never got the recognition he deserves because the industry can be racist as shit, about how if he doesn't play the game now he's never going to be able to give his friend the platform he deserves._

_He thinks about Steve. He thinks about the anti-depressants in the medicine cabinet. He thinks about the flask in his bag. He thinks about a lot of things._

_"I wanna review it in six months." Bucky finally acquiesces, ready to burst with frustration and impotence but trying to keep himself in check under a veneer of icy politeness._

_He can hear his mother saying_ smile _._

_"I mean it." He meets Coulson's eyes at least, not sure what he'll see if he tries to stand his ground with Stark. "I mean as far as I'm concerned, in six months I'll start handing over to Sam and stepping back into teaching. If something crazy happens then we'll deal with that when we come to it, but that's where I am now."_

_"Sure, we can review it in six months." Coulson glances at Stark for a second, and Bucky can just tell they're telling him whatever he wants to hear so he'll toe the line. "Anyway, we really need to wrap things up here. Mr Stark, we've got the eleven o'clock with…"_

_"Sure thing, big C. Just let me have a minute to chat with our star privately." Stark waves him away with a dismissive, flitting hand gesture, and it gives Bucky a small measure of satisfaction to see Coulson looking pissy as fuck about being dismissed like nobody as he gathers his papers and stalks out of the conference room._

_There's a moment of tense silence underneath the harsh fluorescent lights, and Bucky looks down at his hands for something to concentrate on that's not the itch to dig for the flask in his satchel. He's trying to be better for Steve, for everything riding on him, but it's tough when he's being stared down like the inside of his head no longer belongs to him._

_When did he get so fucking passive again? He's been doing better than this. Bucky fucking hates himself right now._

_"So what is it, hm?" Stark breaks the silence and cocks his head like he's examining something mildly interesting, seeing Bucky in a new light. "Pills? Booze? Stick your fingers down your throat so you can be as pretty as the other girls?"_

_"Fucking_ excuse _me?" Bucky's head snaps up in shock as both a surge of anger at the phrasing and an icy drop in his gut swoop through him – how fucking obvious is he being? Nobody in the administration is supposed to know anything about his history. His medical records are private – the doctor swore they were._

_"I don't know what your issue is, kid." Stark holds up his hands like Bucky's overreacting. Which he probably is, and has probably just confirmed for the guy that he's hit the nail on the head. "I'm not here to judge, I've been through plenty of my own rehab since the mid-eighties, but I can smell the vodka from here and it's ten in the morning. I've invested in you. Heavily. And you're not filling me with confidence."_

_Shit shit shit._

_"I was trying to kill a hangover this morning, it was a stupid decision." Bucky's guts are in his boots and his ears feel hot, pulse thudding through him like he's about to get in trouble despite the fact he knows logically he's sitting here with another adult who can only sway him so far. "You have something to say to me, Mr Stark?"_

_"What I have to say, Barnes, is that your whole bad boy shtick is great for ticket sales when it ends up on the internet, but if it's not gonna then you need to get your shit together." He sounds like he's in on a joke Bucky can't get, and it obliterates any shred of confidence he'd managed to scrape together against the odds. "You're a dancer, best in the world probably, so concentrate on what matters and dance. Leave all the complicated shit to the big boys and don't worry about it, huh?"_

_This is exactly what he'd feared – that his business partners would take over because all he's good for is being told how to dance. All the choices have been snatched away, and the treadmill is starting to speed up again right when he's not ready to keep on running._

_Bucky doesn't say anything for long enough that Stark nods and stands up, patting down his rumpled suit (that probably costs more than Bucky makes in a year) and digging out a business card to set down in front of his supposed business partner. It's for a rehab clinic._

_"My treat, if you let the story get out. Always easy to spin a comeback." His voice actually drops to an almost sincere pitch, and Bucky's not sure what to make of that. "Should probably cut the early morning drinking even if you don't go. Trust me. That road doesn't end anywhere fun."_

_When he's alone in the conference room, Bucky reaches for the platter of pastries Stark Industries always leaves out with a shaking hand. He doesn't even try to stop himself._

 

After lying still for long enough that he's fairly sure puking isn't imminent, Bucky rolls over on Sam's couch and buries his face in the cushions with a sigh, swallowing another thick surge of nausea as he goes.

He's not going to throw up. He can't. He has so much riding on him now, so many eyes waiting for him to trip and fall all over again. He can't fall, he can't fail.

A text to his therapist is typed and then erased, never sent. Steve is the same story, an honest message deleted and replaced with a bland one sending hugs to him and Sarah. Bucky discards his phone and squeezes his eyes tight shut, feeling like the biggest, most useless blimp in the world.

He can do this, he can keep it together. That's what he keeps telling himself over and over until his voice is cracked and bleeding.

Just a little while longer.


	9. Ghosts

The studio can be eerie after hours, when the music floating into the halls from different rooms and the constant chatter of students and bustle of classes falls silent. The building used to house a factory of some kind, before being converted into studio space sometime in the fifties, and the senior dancers have already created a few rumours of it being haunted to scare the newbies. Natasha's hanging ballerina ghost, particularly, has become an accepted part of the studio's history despite having zero basis in reality.

Pietro has to admit he finds it a little creepy when he's alone in the building, walking quicker than usual to the safe glow of the reception area through the darkened hall. Maybe his sister claiming to have seen a ghost in the old building the first time she came here has something to do with his jangling nerves, but he's known for longer than he can remember that Wanda's ghost stories are only make-believe.

He expects to make the same self-conscious dash of a boy still young enough to be anxious in the dark tonight, after staying late to give Wanda some privacy in the apartment. Her therapist comes over twice a week, and recently she's been working up to attending a third session at the woman's office. Leaving the house is still an ordeal, but his sister can manage for short bursts now and has even recently taken over buying their groceries. It's been a radical year both twins, if in totally different ways.

It's after eight when Pietro finally packs up and slings his gym bag over his shoulder, muscles aching as he gingerly tests the twinge in his ankle with sneakers on. He needs to keep an eye on anything that feels weird in the lead-up to this show, he can't afford to get benched when he's only just getting back in the game. Judging it's alright to walk on, he wraps his lumpy blue scarf around his neck and braces himself – a little self-consciously: he'll be twenty-one in January and that's way too old to be afraid of imaginary ghosts – before snapping off the light and stepping out into the dark.

The hall isn't as silent as he's expecting, and he pauses to tune into the faint strains of the Nutcracker suite coming from one of the other practice studios. They're only supposed to stay until eight-thirty, at which point the building is locked up and they'd need their own keys to get out, and it's already quarter past when Pietro checks his phone. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure the receptionist is still there (if he gets locked in here then Wanda will freak), he heads for the door with a crack of light coming from beneath it. He doesn't want anyone else to get locked in for the night either.

Music and light spill over him as he opens the door and sticks his head in, stopping in his tracks when he sees who's dancing. Pietro hasn't seen Bucky really dance since his final performance, not outside of rehearsal when he's busy concentrating on his own movements, and the sight of him causes a squeeze in Pietro's stomach he hasn't felt for a while now. His huge crush on Bucky has died down some, with the time apart and everything else going on in his life, but watching the slender, strong lines of his body as he makes the dance seem effortless…

Maybe it's not as dead as he thought.

The music ends before Pietro can decide to slip quietly back out of the room - since Bucky has his own set of keys and probably doesn't want to be disturbed – so he figures it's probably best to say hi and make a quick escape rather than be caught creeping on his friend. Bucky's boyfriend is kind of huge and intimidating, after all.

"Hey." He knocks on the side of the door and Bucky catches sight of him in the mirror and grins loosely as he rolls out his bad shoulder. It's a nice change to see him smile, since everything with the show seems to have left him permanently scowling recently. "I heard your music, making sure nobody's getting locked in for the night."

"I got my keys, don't worry." His vowels sound oddly stretched as he catches his breath, but then Pietro thinks that about American accents a lot so it doesn't really register. "You working late?"

"Just finished." Pietro nods, determinedly looking at anything but Bucky's ass as his friend turns away to rummage in his kit bag. "That last jump was fucking crazy, man. Like no gravity."

"You didn't see the fifteen times I fucked it up before that." He scrapes some sweaty hair that's escaped his bun behind his ear, shaking his head like that's totally unacceptable. "I'm a little heavier than I expected right now, so my timings are all fucked up."

"You're only… seventy kilo?" Pietro sizes him up for a second before stopping himself, struck by how uncomfortable he'd be if someone did the same to him. He knows how sensitive Bucky is about his weight, to the point he's surprised he just admitted to being heavier than usual.

"Something around sixty-four, sixty-five, I think. I suck at conversions." Bucky shrugs, and Pietro can't tell if he's doing a good job of pretending he doesn't care about the numbers or if he really doesn't. He knows he had to get rid of his own scales to stop obsessing, and even now he looks forward to their check-ups and weigh-ins with a kind of masochistic anticipation. "Last time I did this onstage I was a lot lighter."

Bucky turns around with something silver in his hands, and it's not until he shakes it to make the liquid inside slosh that Pietro realises it's a flask. He's always found the people over here to be way more puritanical about drinking than back home in Sokovia, but he figures dancers are a law unto themselves all over the world. Still, he's pretty sure they're not supposed to drink in the studio, so steps fully inside the room and shuts the door in case the receptionist walks past.

"Long day?" He sets his bag down when Bucky makes a sound in his throat and flops down to sit with his back against the mirror. Pietro joins him, trying not to be thrilled when their shoulders touch. He feels like he should be beyond teenage crushes by now, but Bucky seems to be a special case in a lot of respects.

"The longest." Bucky sighs with resignation, unscrewing the flask and taking a long drink before passing it to Pietro. The bags under his eyes are darker than usual, and Pietro's fairly sure he's already a little buzzed from the loose way he moves when he's not controlling himself to dance. "There's just not enough time for this fucking production. It's not like I can ask everyone to work eighteen hour days."

"They would, you know. People look up to you a lot here, I think." Pietro sniffs the flask suspiciously, not recognising the liquor within, but takes a swig anyway because he doesn't want to look like a kid. It burns going down and the taste is unfamiliar, but he manages to only cough a little.

"That kinda makes it worse, somehow." It takes Bucky a minute to notice Pietro handing the flask back, since he's staring so hard at something in the middle distance, and he smiles sheepishly when he finally notices and takes it. "How's Wanda doing?"

"Good, actually. She even shops the groceries now. She's learning sign language and this is easier than speaking in public for her, I don't know why." He shrugs, touched when Bucky smiles like he's genuinely pleased to hear Wanda's thriving. Most inquiries he gets from other dancers are polite, since very few of them have actually met Wanda or know anything about her condition, but he knows Bucky can be callous and won't ask if he doesn't give a shit. "How's your Steve?"

The smile falters, and Pietro's heart sinks as he hopes he hasn't stepped over a line he wasn't supposed to cross.

"He's, uh. He's back living with his Mom right now." Pietro might not be able to read his tone very well, but it's not hard to tell he's putting on a brave face. Bucky must catch the flicker in his friend's expression, because he hurries to elaborate. "Not like that. He's just staying while she's going through treatment. He worries about her if he's not there to help."

"That's shit, poor Steve." Bucky takes another long drink to show his agreement, or at least unintentionally confirm that things are tough right now. Pietro wonders what it's like for him in their situation, but feels too awkward to ask. "Oh yeah, Wanda kitted his Mom a, uh, the sweaters that open up."

He gestures at himself as he searches for the word, too tired for English at the end of the day and a little buzzed already because whatever's in that flask is strong. Bucky grins and cocks his head, and Pietro hopes his hot cheeks look like booze flush because he's not used to being looked at _fondly_.

"Cardigan."

"Right, cardigan. You said she likes these ones, so Wanda made it in rainbow." He smiles bashfully when Bucky lets out a tired laugh. It's still unnaturally quiet in the building, but by now it feels more comfortable than creepy. "I keep forgetting to bring it in. It's probably big enough for Steve if she doesn't like."

"She'll love that." Bucky promises, turning the flask in his hands and looking at it thoughtfully. He's seemed detached lately, spent a worrying amount of time on the business side of things for someone who's supposed to be dancing lead, and it suddenly occurs to Pietro that maybe this is how he's fitting his impossible schedule together: dancing after hours, alone.

Silence stretches easily between them, both in their own heads as they pass the flask back and forth and settle into a relaxed buzz. At least, Pietro feels relaxed. It's rare that he gets this kind of quiet headspace; he still worries too much about his sister, and with the show coming up things always feel frantic. Bucky seems drunker, less co-ordinated, and there's a sense of desperation emanating from his perfectly calm exterior that Pietro can't quite put his finger on.

It's like he's still moving, even when he's not. Maybe the guy just doesn't know how to stay still.

"How you doing since…?" Bucky lets the question hang when he breaks the silence, since they both know what he's talking about. It's easier not to have to hear Pierce's name if it can be avoided.

"Eh." Pietro makes a noncommittal noise and waves his hand slightly before he takes another burning swig of dark liquor (it might be whiskey, but he's never had whiskey so he can't tell). Everything has been going well lately, enough that sometimes it almost feels like Pierce and their last studio never happened. Sometimes. "Not fucking any old man soon, to be honest."

Bucky snorts a laugh and Pietro dips his head with a shy smile. It's nice to talk like this, to joke about the shit that nearly killed his career and his mind but didn't win. Bucky is one of the few who know about what happened and don't treat him like he's fragile because of it, maybe because he's also been through something and come out the other side. Maybe he just knows what it's like to be handled like a breakable ornament when you're really made of marble.

"You wanna hear something nobody else knows?" Bucky rolls his head along the mirror to look at his friend with a conspiratorial little grin. It feels like they're in a bubble here, just the two of them in a bright ship floating through the loud city darkness. "I got my first lead because I sucked the casting director's dick."

"Don't lie." Pietro's eyes widen and his mouth drops comically as Bucky takes the flask back with a low giggle. It's like they're friends sharing secrets at a sleepover, whatever fucked up version of that they've ended up with from the hands life has dealt. "But you're amazing! No way you have to do that."

"I would've got the part anyway, I was just naïve. Someone tells you that's how the world works and you don't know any better. Such an idiot." Bucky rolls his eyes like he's disapproving of his past self and tips his head back against the glass. He's quiet when he speaks again, but he doesn't sound sad. Lost in his head, but not upset. "I don't want it to be like that here. I want us to be better."

"It already is better, I think." Pietro is tempted to rest his head on Bucky's shoulder, but he holds back in case he breaks the comfortable atmosphere. "In lots of ways. Like Kamala and her hijab, she couldn't wear that at the old company. There are lots of things like that… it's much better for dancers here."

It doesn't seem to soothe Bucky, who finds the flask is empty and gets unsteadily to his feet to put it away in his kit bag. He weaves a little as he walks there and back, and Pietro is surprised by how intoxicated he seems – maybe he was drunker than he looked when they sat down.

"I just… If we don't pull this show off then the financers could pull out. We wouldn't be able to provide subsidised lessons, most of our kids would have to drop out of class… I'd never be able to stop…" He trails off, and the look on his face sparks worry deep in Pietro's gut.

Bucky looks defeated, like he's trying to paddle helplessly against an inescapable tide, but the expression is gone as soon as it was there, schooled into something self-deprecating until he can't hold the mask and it slips again.

"Sorry, I'm just really nervous." He clenches and unclenches his fists like he doesn't know what to do with himself after letting some of the cracks show, and Pietro pushes himself to his feet because he feels like he should do something, even if he doesn't know what. "I…I feel like I'm letting you all down. I can't even make it to rehearsal half the time because I'm begging for funding in fucking meetings and I've put so much of the burden on Maria and—"

"Buck, slow down." Pietro holds his hands up slightly and tries to soothe the situation, because his friend risks talking himself into some kind of anxious meltdown from where he's standing, or at least feeling embarrassed about this whole thing when he sobers up. "Rehearsal is fine, it's not easy but we're working hard on it. We'll be ready."

"Not from what I've seen. Not from the way I'm fucking dancing like an amateur." The laugh is hollow this time, nothing like earlier. Bucky leans forward and drops his head against the mirror, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead hard into the cold glass.

Pietro would feel bad about the guy apparently being a weepy drunk in front of him if he didn't get the feeling this is Bucky being honest for once. He's never seen his friend without masks, the perfected forced smile and carefully-cultivated air of not giving a fuck. This feels like someone in over their head who doesn't know how to find the light switch in a dark room.

Pietro knows how that looks, he's seen it in the mirror.

"It's gonna be terrible. We're gonna be terrible. It's gonna be so bad." Bucky mutters anxiously to himself, pulling his head back and letting it thud against the mirror again dejectedly. Pietro doesn't think he's talking to him anymore, and the idea that this is how Bucky talks to himself makes him sad in the hollow parts of his chest. "It's all gonna go wrong. Everyone's gonna know I'm a fucking failure."

The flood of self-hatred stops abruptly when Pietro wraps his arms around Bucky from behind and hugs him as tight as he can. He doesn't know what else to do, and his impulse – however naïve it might feel – is that Bucky needs a fucking hug. He holds him tightly, as if he can transfer strength through touch and keep his friend from fracturing. Bucky closes his eyes, unable to look at his twisted expression in the mirror, and lets his head hang down as he's held.

He misses being held. He misses Steve.

"It will be okay." Pietro promises, voice level and sure, when Bucky finally gets himself together enough to reach up and hold onto the arms around his chest. "Even if it's the most shittiest Nutcracker in the whole world, it will be okay. The world isn't on your shoulders, okay? Nobody standing over you with a stick but you."

Bucky makes a strangled sound that might be an attempt at a laugh, and Pietro just squeezes him in response. It's odd, but he doesn't feel anything to do with his crush when he hugs Bucky right now, both of them tipsy and stressed and emotional. The kiss of life doesn't feel like making out, he supposes.

It takes a few minutes for Bucky's breath to stop hitching in a way Pietro respectfully doesn't concentrate too hard on, and he turns around and hugs his friend back when Pietro lets him go. Dancers tend to be tactile, being in such a physical industry, and Pietro figures not getting a lot of human contact with his boyfriend gone and missing rehearsal has been harder on Bucky than he'd anticipated. It would be hard on him, anyway, and he's fumbling pretty hard with this situation so he'll stick to what he knows.

"C'mon, it's late. I'll walk you home, yeah?" He pats Bucky on the back as his friend nods into his shoulder, smelling of sweat and whiskey but not entirely unpleasant… which is definitely his crush talking again because that's logically not a great combination. "Maria will kill me if you sleep in the studio, scare her again when she opens up in the morning."

"That was one time." Bucky does manage something resembling a weak laugh this time, and Pietro pushes him away to change his shoes so they can leave already. Wanda will be getting worried soon, and he doesn't want to rock that boat when the seas are finally calm.

They bundle back up against the cold and switch out the lights. It'll only be a few hours until they see the studio again, and Pietro has concern knotting up in his stomach that he can't quite put words to yet, but this evening feels like it's changed their friendship for the better, somehow. As long as Bucky isn't too embarrassed by his breakdown to look Pietro in the face tomorrow, that is.

"These hallways gimmie the creeps at night." Bucky whispers as they leave their bubble and head out into the dark. Pietro smiles to himself and fumbles to turn on his phone torch so they can get to the exit, sure they can outrun anything lurking in the shadows.

It's easier to find their way out together, whatever ghosts are snapping at their heels.   


	10. Eyes

"So, when did you start dancing?"

Peggy Carter, the British filmmaker who's decided that the dancer behind the hugely-famous viral video of 'Take Me to Church' is going to be the subject of her next documentary, seems perfectly nice. Which is unnerving.

She and Bucky communicated via Skype and email while she was convincing Bucky to let them film, something he only agreed to after a lot of arm-twisting from the board, but she's something else in the flesh: disarming, easy to talk to, easier to trust. It's a dangerous combination, especially when Bucky needs to keep his wits about him and his media face firmly on. He's had it hammered into him time and again that this could make or break the company's future, so he can't fuck it up.

Only Pietro has seen behind the curtain and got a look at how stressed and on edge he really is, and Bucky wants to keep it that way.

"Uh, I was four." He's been briefly coached on the sort of thing they'll talk about, but it's still their first on-camera interview and Bucky's nervous. He's a couple of vodkas deep, as a result, which he hopes will hit the sweet spot of making him talkative without being impaired. He supposes it should concern him that he's getting so good at calculating his intake, but he figures food and drink are the same in his fucked up head.

"Me and my twin sister started classes then, at around four. I first went away to a school at uh, nine, maybe ten. I think."

"That's awfully young." Peggy remarks, gently concerned in a way that makes Bucky want to open up to her. Her red lipstick and beguiling manner remind him of Natasha, which means she's very, very dangerous. "What made you choose ballet at that age?"

Bucky shoves his left hand under his leg and digs his fingers into the couch to stay focused. This is his apartment, his boyfriend's art on the walls, his shitty Netflix playlist on mute on the TV behind Peggy. He's on home turf, and he tells himself that gives him control here.

"I didn't choose ballet, ballet chose me." Bucky smiles, tighter than piano wire and definitely less convincing than he'd like. Steve is making coffee in the kitchen and the knowledge that he's got someone here to stop him saying anything really stupid should be more comforting than it is. "My Mom was a ballerina before she came to America, so she wanted us to dance."

"So you didn't have much of a choice, really." Peggy nods sympathetically, sounding like she gets it. She's beautiful, Bucky can see why Steve did a double take upon meeting her. "It was ballet from the word go. Did you get the opportunity to have other hobbies?"

He can't help the laugh, in spite of the way it makes her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Does he sound bitter? He needs to get his shit together.

"No. You don't get to be the best by taking time off." He can hear the words in Mama's voice, and it unsettles him right to his core. Bucky clears his throat and shifts his weight a little, trying to get his balance. "One room in our house got converted into a mini studio. I worked seven days a week, minimum five hours a day."

"Doesn't sound like much of a childhood." It's an open-ended statement, deliberately so, and Bucky knows this is when he's supposed to say something about all the pain being worth it for the end result. But he's just so fucking _tired_ of toeing the party line when his mom's not even _here_ to make sure he's _good_.

"Nah. It fucking sucked." He shrugs, loose-limbed now the vodka has settled into his bones. He's already hyper-aware that he's doing something wrong, but the idea of praising his parents for his shit childhood leaves too bitter a taste in his mouth for him to swallow it and smile. "Sorry, am I allowed to curse?"

"Yes, sure." Peggy looks slightly taken aback, like she wasn't expecting Bucky to give her a straight answer either. She glances at her notes, taking advantage of the turn the conversation has taken like the consummate professional she is. "So, um. After having that kind of choice pushed on you, what's your relationship with your family like now?"

"My sister dances in Russia, we're close. She just had a baby a while ago and I love that kid to bits." He really doesn't want the camera to catch his loose movement, so Bucky might be paying a little too much attention to holding himself still and not enough to how he's phrasing what's coming out of his mouth. "I don't talk to my parents anymore, haven't seen them for a couple of years now."

"That must be hard." Peggy prompts him, but Bucky shrugs and corrects her instead of just going with it.

"They're not good people. I don't want anything to do with them."

Silence. She definitely wasn't expecting that.

"Is that related to your childhood? The fact they pushed you—"

He interrupts her, ringing in his ears like he's about to panic.

"Starving me and hitting me wasn't a _push_. That's what it's related to."

It's defensive honesty, weirdly. Bucky wants her to back off the topic, at the same time as he's determined that nobody should be able to infer anything positive about his parents from this. If this documentary turns into something his mother can show people to prove how wonderfully she trained her talented children, Bucky just won't be able to handle it.

"Sorry to interrupt." Steve is definitely _not_ sorry to interrupt, coming through from the kitchen and setting mugs of coffee down at an opportune moment. "Buck, can I talk to you for a sec?"

They excuse themselves to Peggy, whose sleek professional demeanour appears slightly shaken in the face of Bucky's surprise, brutal honesty, and Bucky follows Steve into the kitchen. His boyfriend doesn't look mad, but Bucky still has an instinctive flash of panic that he's in _trouble_ for telling someone things that are meant to stay secret.

"M'sorry." He blurts out once they're behind a closed door, and Steve immediately defuses the anxiety. He knows how some of Bucky's thought processes work now, which cuts down on misunderstandings, at least.

"I'm not mad, you're not in trouble." He cuts off the thought efficiently, gentle and firm. He's been worried about the prospect of this film from the moment it was suggested, and seeing things already beginning to spiral doesn't fill him with confidence. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine." Bucky shrugs, because he's a little buzzed and starting to breathe again and is fine, mostly. It's just not exactly an _easy_ topic of conversation.

"Just… You can say whatever you want, you know that. Just watch yourself?" Steve points out carefully, and yeah, maybe Bucky does need the reminder. "She's a journalist, not your therapist. People are gonna hear what you say here, I just want you to be sure you're okay with that."

"I… I don't want people to think they were nice. They don't deserve that." He mumbles, scratching at the back of his neck uncomfortably. He doesn't really know how to explain what he means, as usual, but Steve seems to get it.

"No, they don't." Steve agrees, pulling Bucky into a hug because it looks like he needs one. Bucky folds into him with a sigh, it feels like forever since they've been in the kitchen together. "You don't have to talk about anything you don't want, and you can stop at any time. Remember that. Be nice to yourself, okay? You kinda matter to me."

"So romantic." Bucky snorts, pressing his face into Steve's neck for a second before he straightens up. "Thanks."

"S'okay. I'm doing a freezer batch of soup, so I'll be around if you need me." Of course he's cooking, leaving Bucky with food in the hopes he's still eating in his boyfriend's absence. Bucky wishes he wouldn't worry so much, but it's not entirely unfounded so he can't exactly complain.

People worry about him because they care, not because they think he's incompetent. It had blown his mind when Clint explained that to him, and he has to remind himself of it a lot lately.

"Go get 'em." Steve pats him on the ass on his way out, (Bucky would make a joke about sports pats if he wasn't so nervous), and the casual touch means Bucky's heart rate is back to normal by the time he's sitting down with Peggy again.

"Sorry about that." He wishes he could've taken a shot of vodka while he was in the kitchen, but a hug from his big dumb boyfriend is definitely better than nothing. "Where were we?"

"Your family." Peggy doesn't need to turn the camera back on: the thing is always running and Bucky needs to remember that.

"Yeah. I'd kinda like to move on, if that's okay." He couches the request in his best charming smile, game face firmly back in place. "Not my favourite subject."

"No problem." Peggy smiles right back, and Bucky really is starting to like her even if he's fairly certain he's being manipulated. "Steve seems nice."

"He's the best." He agrees, with a genuine smile this time. The camera catches the difference, he's sure, but there's nothing he can do about that.  

"And he's your…"

"Boyfriend." Bucky fills in. She's obviously probing for it they're married or not, because there's no way she hasn't already established they're a couple, and the reminder of the ring hidden in Steve's sock drawer sets Bucky on edge again. Just a little.

"How long have you two been together?"

"Uh, two and a half years? Something like that. He's the one who knows all the anniversaries and shit." He gestures vaguely and wonders for a second if he looks faggy and stereotypical on camera. The idea doesn't bother him, he's just never seen himself on video without dancing and he's just buzzed enough that the idea is trippy. "Steve used to play piano for my former company, that's how we met."

"Sounds romantic." Peggy sounds endeared, and he hopes that means he's doing this right.

"Luckiest day of my life, when I walked in and he was sitting there." Bucky ducks his head to hide his smile, just a little, because he can't help being soppy about Steve sometimes. "Really lucky, the job doesn't leave a lot of time for socialising. Hard to meet people."

"You took a break, didn't you? Quite a lengthy one." Peggy glances at her notes, where she's probably got way more information on him than she's letting on. "You dropped out of your last production after opening night."

Bucky's stomach growls. He hopes the camera doesn't catch it.

"I got injured, unfortunately. Not much of a break." He keeps his tone light, a tight leash on his facial expression. It's inevitable that he has to talk about it, but he can at least manage _how_. "That's where that fucking video came from."

He leads into it on purpose, trying to keep some kind of control over the narrative. Peggy looks pleased.

"You're not happy about it? Last I saw, your performance to 'Take Me to Church' had something like sixteen million views on YouTube."

"I don't like watching myself." Bucky smiles tightly again, even less convincing than before. Peggy notices, of course, and works at the crack like a pro.

"There have been some rumours around that performance, haven't there?"

" _Some._ " Bucky snorts, folding his arms and hoping he looks casual rather than defensive.

"So you've heard them, then." She raises an eyebrow, trying to draw him out.

"Dancers gossip." He shrugs, not about to volunteer any information she doesn't specifically ask for. He's already fucked up and gone overboard about his family, he's not going to give her enough rope to hang him about his career. He's stupid, but he's not _that_ stupid.

"Some people were saying you were going to retire from dancing for good."

"I thought about it." He admits, shifting uncomfortably in his seat a little as he fights the urge to pinch the fat on his side through his shirt where the camera can't see. "At one point it looked like my injury wasn't going to give me a choice, so it wasn't entirely my decision."

"But you did decide to come back, didn't you?"

"I set up my own company, I do more teaching than dancing these days." It has to come up, but it's another touchy subject because he needs to make sure he shows his company in a good light. It seems like most of his life is a touchy subject right now, and he could _really_ do with a drink. "Our first production's opening in December."

"Are you taking part?" Peggy already knows he is, she's had the waivers to film during rehearsals for weeks, but she enquires anyway.

"I'm the lead." He tries to look like he doesn't hate it, as charming as he can manage. "We don't have that many experienced dancers on the books right now, so they asked me. I didn't cast myself, I swear."

He does his best to sound self-deprecating, and it does enough to make Peggy laugh. It's been a while since Bucky stage-managed his every gesture and inflection like this, and he doesn't know how he used to do it all the time because it's _exhausting_. No wonder he crashed, he has no idea how he kept it up for so long.

"Are you excited to be back?"

"Uh, it's a little sooner than I was expecting." Bucky hedges, because he's never going to be able to pretend he's super stoked about it the entire time, especially with all the time they'll spend together in the near future. "I'm happy to be working with my friends again."

"Your injury must be totally healed, then." Peggy's already explained that the interview will most likely end up cut up and shown in pieces around other footage, so they're jumping through topics to get soundbites in a less natural way than unguided conversation. It's abrupt, but not enough to put Bucky off-guard. "What did you hurt, exactly?"

"I broke my arm pretty bad." He taps his left shoulder demonstratively. "Screws and plates and shit. They bolted me back together pretty good, I have a shit time going through airport security now with all the metal."

"Goodness. Sounds like you were in a car crash." She looks legitimately shocked, and Bucky's starting to worry about how hard it is for him to read her clearly. He's watched some of her documentaries and was baffled by the way people just spilled their most intimate secrets to her without much prompting, but he's starting to understand why.

If she catches him in a vulnerable moment, he could see himself telling Peggy everything. Bucky needs to keep his guard up or every fragile thing he's built could come tumbling down.

"I fell down a set of stairs, lucky I didn't break my neck." He nods, because he's glad he didn't now but the memories still bother him sometimes. He still wakes up in a cold sweat in the early hours of the morning, remembering that long, awful moment when he woke up and realised he couldn't feel anything at all.

He wasn't afraid of heights before, but he can't look out of a third storey window now. He keeps that strictly to himself.

"Must have been a long recovery."

"Wasn't a picnic." Bucky agrees with another tight nod, keeping his tone as light as is appropriate for the topic. He's already so tired and he's got rehearsal later, he really hopes this doesn't last much longer. "I had a lot of support, my friends were really great."

That, thankfully, moves them into easier waters. Bucky slowly relaxes as they chat about his friends and the new company, and he delivers his best PR lines in a manner which will hopefully appease Stark and Coulson. If it gets them off his back then this will all be worth it, even if he did fuck up talking about his family a little. Becky will understand, and he tells himself firmly that he doesn't give a shit what his parents think anymore.

Maybe if he tells himself enough times it'll become true. Maybe.

By the time they wrap up and Peggy leaves, Bucky's about ready to drop. She's filming class in the morning, so at least he has tonight's rehearsal with only his usual self-consciousness and without having to worry about a camera capturing his every mistake. He's got a couple of hours until then, and Steve humming to himself in the kitchen settles some of the anxious churning in his stomach, makes the apartment feel like home again.

It feels like forever since they've shared space. Even longer since they've had the opportunity to do anything else.

"I need a nap and some dick." He bursts into the kitchen and announces this loudly, quickly pouring and downing a shot of cheap whiskey and reaching past a bemused Steve to turn the stove off. If he keeps up an energetic front he's got the chance of actually being intimate with his boyfriend, which he's missed _a lot_. "Pants off, Rogers."

"It wasn't so bad, then?" Steve sounds equal parts relieved and amused, abandoning his soup as Bucky starts undoing his pants from behind. Bucky's just relieved that how rattled he is after the interview isn't showing, because he really doesn't want to talk about it or worry Steve more. "You're gonna add movie star to your repertoire now, huh?"

"I asked for ass, not sass." He grumbles, trying to sound playful and not like he's hyper-aware of the clock running down until he's alone again. He needs to bury his head in the sand right now, and sex has always let him hide from himself enough to quiet his racing thoughts for a while.

"That'll make the DVD cover." Steve laughs and pulls his shirt over his head and yeah, that's more like it. "World-renowned ballet dancer Bucky Barnes, quote: 'ass not sass'."

"I've got something to stick in your mouth if you don't shut it." Bucky leers exaggeratedly until Steve kisses a smile onto his face, backing him towards the bedroom as they stumble over pretty much everything in their path.

It's the kind of giggly, playful sex that gets Bucky out of his head and lets them forget about the rest of the world for a little while. The interview seems like a bad dream, something for his later self to worry about. If Steve didn't have to leave almost immediately after, things would be perfect.

Bucky naps and dreams of being watched by a giant pair of eyes he knows somehow are his mother waiting for him to make a mistake. He doesn't sleep long.

 

The problem with fitting something as complex as a life into a narrative, Peggy muses as she watches the footage of her first interview with her subject, is that most things happen in the space between the big moment and the neat 'and then' that a story needs to cut to.

Meeting Bucky Barnes is extremely frustrating, in that sense, because he seems to be teetering right on the edge of 'and then', and Peggy's not entirely sure what to do with that. There's something going on below the surface, an undercurrent she can't quite see clearly but for the moments when Barnes forgets to hold his mask up. When he talked about his parents she saw a flash of it, something hiding its teeth and pretending to be docile.

There's a story here, she's just not sure what it is. She needs to do some more digging.


	11. Crash Test Dummy

"So," Clint leans back in his chair, hands folded neatly on the pad resting on his knee hinting at a degree of professionalism he doesn't usually bring to their sessions, and Bucky braces himself in case things are about to get difficult. "How's the medication treating you?"

"Uh, good actually," he nods quickly, relieved he doesn't have to lie right out of the gate. It's been an intense week and he'd prefer it if this session wasn't a struggle too. "I feel less, uh, swingy. It takes longer for me to get anxious about stuff."

"That's promising," Clint looks him over as he makes a note, assessing in a way that never fails to make Bucky squirm no matter who the look is coming from. "Are they helping now Steve's not in the apartment?"

"I guess," how the fuck would he know, he thinks irritably. He's not dead, if that's any measure of success, but Bucky's a grown fucking man and he feels weak and small at the idea that merely surviving is something he needs help with. Maybe that's why he doesn't want to be in his head lately, the creeping realisation that legitimate medical professionals think he can't survive on his own, but maybe he's just filtering things through a lens of barely-balanced stress.

As if Bucky _knows_ things about himself for _sure_.

"And how about the drinking?" It's not a delicate subject broach, Clint doesn't seem to be holding back in any areas today, and Bucky picks guiltily at his nails and tries not to think about Thor's emergency flask in his jacket pocket.

"Way better," he nods decisively, meeting Clint's eyes with the confidence of a seasoned liar. He refuses to let one temporary crutch scupper the delicate balance he's achieved, reminds himself firmly that Clint has the power to stick him in a psych ward if he doesn't toe the line, no matter how friendly his therapist seems. "I'm not as anxious so I'm not leaning on it anymore. Totally fine."

There's a tense silence as Clint puts down his pen and pinches the bridge of his nose with a barely-contained sigh. Looks like his veneer of professionalism wasn't as secure as he'd hoped.

"Bucky," he begins, wearily, and Bucky's stomach flips nauseously because he still can't handle the idea of disappointing someone, of being in _trouble_. "I can't help you if you don't talk to me."

"I am talking to you," he sticks his hands under his legs after he tears off a hangnail hard enough to bleed because they've started to shake with nerves. Clint could put him in a psych ward and take away whatever control he has left – the idea keeps twisting around and around in his head now it's occurred to him once, now he's seen the disappointed look on his therapist's face. "I'm sorry, I don't… I don't know what you want me to say."

As soon as the apology leaves his lips, Bucky feels like there's no oxygen in the room. His muscles go tight as he realises he's starting to panic – and he can't panic because he's supposed to be better and he's already disappointed Clint and Clint could put him in a psych ward and – and he forces himself to take as deep a breath as he can to try and get this under control. He can't lose control here.

Christ, he's a mess. He has no idea how he's going to get through the Nutcracker run when he can't get though a slightly difficult conversation without choking down a panic attack.

He's fucking starving.

"I don't _want_ you to say anything, I'm just concerned that you're telling me what you think I want to hear rather than what's actually going on with you," Bucky's breath catches again when he realises Clint knows exactly what he's doing. "I'm not here to punish you for having problems, Bucky."

"Can we… Can we talk about something else?" He breathes out slowly, hyper aware of Clint watching him, and attempts to order his thoughts. "I dunno what, just something else. I'm feeling kinda panicky."

"Can you explain why you're feeling panicky?" Clint looks concerned, but not surprised. Bucky isn't sure if that's a good thing or not.

"I feel like I'm gonna get in trouble," he feels stupid and childish as he takes too long to get the words out, flexing his fingers and digging them into the chair cushion under his thighs to ground himself. "I… I know logically I'm not gonna, I know it's just a hangover from my shitty childhood, but it still feels real. So I'd rather… not."

Clint leans back in his chair and looks at Bucky for a long, searching moment.

"Dude," he shakes his head, but the disappointed look has faded and something about the quirk of his mouth almost looks… pleased. "Sometimes you have your shit way more together than you think."

"What… What does that mean?" Bucky frowns, perplexed, and Clint actually smiles in spite of the general tone of this session.

"A year ago, there's no way you would've asked someone to change the subject if it was making you uncomfortable. It wouldn't have been on your radar as an _option_ ," he lets that sink in for a second, as Bucky's cheeks flush with heat because that hadn't occurred to him and maybe – just maybe – he's not quite as much of a mess as he thinks. "I'm on your side, man. We've come this far together, don't shut me out now. What's _really_ going on with you?"

It's quiet for a moment as Bucky takes a couple of shaky breaths in and out, steeling himself against rising nausea and managing his learned aversion to being honest. Clint lets him get a handle on himself, not pushing as the clock ticks on the wall and someone's car alarm starts sounding distantly on the street below.

Normal life goes on, whether it takes a minute to find your balance or not.

"I'm really hungry," Bucky breaks the silence eventually, eyes closed so he can say what he needs to without being influenced by Clint's micro reactions. Once he starts, something has changed and he can't stem the tide – 'word vomit' floats through his mind like a joke at a funeral. "Like, fucking starving. And I can't tell if that makes me feel better or not. I could handle things better on the surface when I was sticking to my rules about food. Now I'm healthier, I guess, but I'm more out of control than I've ever been."

He barely pauses for breath before he continues. Clint's glad Bucky's eyes are closed, because he's pretty sure the shock is plain on his face in response to the guy actually _talking_ for once.

"I don't eat because I'm scared I'll binge if I do. The antidepressants do help but I'm still drinking too much because I don't like being in my head when I'm out of control, and I'm so stressed I feel like I'm walking on a fucking high wire most of the time. Steve's mom is still really sick, so I can't ask him to come back home, but I've never lived on my own and I fucking hate it. At least around people I had something keeping me in check, but when I'm alone it's hard to not just…"

He stops, opening his eyes abruptly and slapping a hand over his mouth like he has to physically stop himself.

"Shit," Bucky swallows hard, suddenly nauseated. "Sorry, I didn't…"

"See how I'm not mad?" Clint, bless his fucking heart, managed to school his expression by now. He remains looking as utterly unfazed has he did when Bucky opened his eyes after the word waterfall suddenly dried up. "I mean really look, Bucky. I'm not angry about any of that, there aren't consequences to you telling me shit. Okay?"

It takes a minute, but Bucky nods.

"Okay."

His body is still going haywire, heart beating like a fucked clock as it tries to come down from the adrenaline of _being in trouble_ , but Bucky pulls himself together to continue the conversation. Maybe he can trust Clint after all. Maybe.

"Alright, where do you want to start?"

 

"So, as you can see we have some visitors today. This is Peggy and Sharon the camera guy. I've checked and she will accept being addressed as 'Sharon, the camera guy'," a wave of slightly nervous laughter runs around the room, dancers shooting curious glances at the new arrivals. Bucky hopes being filmed encourages them to do their best instead of putting them off.

"We don't have time for you to be interested in what they're doing, so please ignore them from now on. Also, if you could make me look like a really good teacher, that would be great."

He lets them laugh at that, shaking his head self-deprecatingly before starting class in earnest. It's been a while since he was able to lead a class, spending more time arguing with the investors than dancing, and he enjoys it even as he struggles to ignore the circling camera which feels more like a lensed vulture. He really fucking hates being on film, and a fumbled demonstration makes him wish he'd never let Stark and Coulson strong-arm him into this in the first place.

 _You have your shit way more together than you think_ , Bucky reminds himself firmly, his therapist's voice echoing in his mind as he corrects his mistake and the class continues on. It's not the end of the world to fuck up… sometimes.

He catches up with Natasha afterwards, towelling the sweat out of his hair and trying not to worry about how it looks. Nat offers to braid it and he punches her in the arm, grumbling about how that's _peak gay even for him_ and hoping Peggy doesn't decide to use that particular piece of audio, as he switches his phone back on after leaving it languishing in his gym bag during class.

Bucky's stomach clenches when he sees he has ten missed calls. What the hell?

"Buck," Maria sticks her head through the door and then actually comes in to speak to him – rather than yelling whatever she wants to say across the room like usual as the dancers trickle out around her. This is all giving him a very bad feeling, and he instinctively tugs on his hair a little too hard as he ties it back to try and keep himself grounded. "Your sister called the office."

"Oh, sorry," why the fuck is Becky calling the office? From Russia? "I had my phone off so—"

"Your dad is in the hospital," Maria cuts him off, concern building behind her serious expression because she knows a little bit about Bucky's relationship with his family – just enough to know this isn't going to be a normal parental emergency. "She said call her back as soon as you can."

Bucky just blinks for a second, completely frozen. His internal reaction is a mixture of 'oh shit' and 'oh _shit_ ', and he feels callous as fuck when he realises only part of that is concern for his father. Natasha touches his arm and he realises he's been stunned for too long.

"Shit. Okay, shit," he snaps out of it and fumbles with his phone, hands unsteady as he paws his way to calling Becky back.

Maria, who is secretly a very caring person despite doing her best to never, ever show it, hustles the last of the straggling students on to their next class to give him a measure of privacy while the call connects. Nat has already wandered over with a forced casualness to talk to Peggy and Sharon, which hopefully means Bucky's numb panic won't be caught on camera. Distantly, he thinks about how he doesn't deserve people being so good to him – but then his sister picks up, the rollercoaster drops, and he's snapped forcibly into the present.

"Hey, what's going on? Dad's in the hospital?"

"I don't know what's happening," Becky sounds upset, her voice thick and stuffed up like she's been crying. Bucky's heart sinks even further. "Mom left a message and said he had a heart attack. I couldn't get hold of her for ages, then she finally picked up and said he's in the hospital but fine. That's the last I heard."

"So he's okay?"

"I think so. She's being evasive as fuck," Becky's voice breaks and she sniffs hard, trying to catch her breath. Thousands of miles away, Bucky feels the odd, connected pain of his twin suffering and wishes he could be there to stop it. "Can you go down there and see what's going on?"

There it is, the executioner's axe coming down bluntly on his neck. Bucky drops down to sit on the bench next to his gym bag and shoes, because his legs have suddenly turned to cold water at the prospect of seeing…

"I… Becks, you know I can't," he rubs a shaky hand across his eyes, trying to breathe normally. Peggy definitely took notice from across the room as soon as he sat down like a puppet with the strings cut, so he has to at least try and look normal.

"I'm not asking you to spend time with her," she's irritated. Of course she is, Bucky thinks with a strange kind of humour, this isn't something you'd usually have to talk a person into. Look at Steve and his mom: normal people love their parents. "Just find out what's happening."

"I really can't—"

"Jesus Christ, Bucky! Can you stow your shit and stop being selfish for five minutes?! I'm not asking you to do a lot!" He physically flinches when she yells, shrinking down into himself instinctively. Bucky doesn't blame his sister for being upset – she's close to their father and has always had a good relationship with him, had a completely different childhood to Bucky and doesn't always get his experience even though she tries – but he's pretty sure it's not okay to take it out on him. He can't get in trouble for this.

That sounds like something Steve would say, he thinks, so it's probably right.

"You sound like her when you yell," Bucky manages to sound cold, rather than rattled. It's enough to snap Becky out of it, and he can picture her pacing restlessly on the other end of the line as she swallows her anger.

"Sorry. Shit, sorry," she sighs heavily, getting her temper on a leash, and comes back more measured. "I shouldn't have got mad, okay? I know being around them is hard for you. I wouldn't ask if there was another way, but the hospital won't tell me anything over the phone and I need to know if he's okay. I'm losing my mind here, Buck. Please? For me?"

He closes his eyes and fights down a bolt of resentment, because Becky knows he can't take guilt trips and she's always managed to wheedle him into seeing things her way. For better or worse, everyone in their family is manipulative as hell.

"Fine. Okay, fine," he croaks out at length, and he's probably imagining the sigh of relief over the phone but it makes him feel better about this shit, at least. "Which hospital?"

"Sacred Heart, I'll text you the details," she's definitely relieved, which makes some of Bucky's bullshit twin-pain ease. He's going to get very, very drunk after this shit and nobody can make him feel bad about it. "Thank you. I know you hate this."

"Yeah, well," he bites back a passive-aggressive comment, because when did his feelings ever matter?

Now the initial panic has died down, Bucky's gone totally numb. Physically and mentally – he's not sure he can feel his extremities and he's not sure if he cares. He could do with a bottle of vodka and an entire loaf of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, on the sugary white bread which sits heavy in his gut until it comes back up and takes all his bad feelings with it.

"Take Steve, okay?" Becky's still talking, right, he has to focus. She's suddenly worried about his feelings again, which Bucky fights the slightly hysterical urge to laugh at. "I'm sorry, I wouldn't ask if—"

"Don't worry about it," he cuts her off, because he's not convinced he isn't going to have to bolt for the bathroom and heave up a whole lot of nothing now his nervous system is starting to come back online. "I'll call you when I know something."

"Thank you, Bucky. I—"

He hangs up before she can say anything else. Today is really not his fucking day.

Getting out of the studio is a blur. Natasha has already called Steve after getting rid of Peggy and Sharon (because she's not prepared to buy any of Bucky's _I can do it all by myself_ bullshit when they have a show to prepare and need him firing on all cylinders), who's going to meet him at the hospital. Thor hands over his flask without being asked when Bucky goes back by the office to get his stuff, and he swigs it gratefully before hurrying to the subway.

There's a pretzel cart near the entrance, conveniently.

Bucky inhales three on the train, not looking up to see if anyone finds his robotic, relentless chew-swallow-drink routine weird. He ducks into a Starbucks bathroom round the corner from the hospital, chokes up the stodgy mush until his hands stop shaking, and gets his game face on.

Steve will be there, he tells himself firmly, sounding uncomfortably like his dad in his head as he pulls himself together. He won't be on his own, he just has to get in, find out what's going on, and leave. His mother has no power over him, he doesn't have to listen to anything she says, and Steve will pull him out if he gets too caught up. It's going to be fine.

Wishful thinking has never worked for Bucky, but right now, crushing mints between his aching teeth and preparing for his own personal firing squad, it's all he's got.

 _You have your shit way more together than you think_ , Clint said. Time to test that theory.


	12. the world went away

Bucky has his face buried in Steve's neck within five seconds of seeing him waiting outside the hospital's main entrance. There's a bite of frost in the air, but Steve's skin is hot under his clumsily-knitted rainbow scarf (a Maximoff original) and Bucky breathes him in gratefully as strong arms wrap about him and hold him together. 

He always feels small when he's with Steve. He doesn't want to examine the implications of that too closely, in case it ruins one of the only things that makes him feel safe.

"Hey," Steve presses a kiss somewhere above his ear and Bucky relaxes a fraction because he’s not alone. God bless Steve Rogers and his lack of self-preservation. “What did Becky say?”

“Sounds like a heart attack,” Bucky keeps his face hidden for a minute longer, cringing at the roughness of his voice as it crawls out of his wrecked throat. Steve will be able to tell he’s been purging, but right now that’s the least of his worries. “But Mama’s not saying anything, so I’ve gotta find out what’s going on.”

“You don’t have to-” Steve begins, but Bucky shakes his head and he sighs, swallowing down his objections with little protest because no matter how concerned he is, this isn’t his family drama to handle.

When Bucky finally pulls away and Steve can get a good look at him, though, his heart sinks. It’s not like the weight loss would be noticeable to anyone who didn’t know the shape of Bucky’s body with their eyes closed, but there’s a looseness to his sweater that Steve can’t ignore. His face, however, has the empty puffiness of not sleeping, drinking too much, and (of course) making himself throw up. 

He’s not in a good place. At all. Fuck.

“I’m coming with you,” is all Steve says, for now, even as Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets and shrinks into himself because he knows he’s been assessed and found wanting. Steve can never convince him that concern doesn’t mean he’s failed, so he doesn’t try when they have more pressing matters at hand. 

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbles, not meeting Steve’s eyes now he knows he’s been found out. He has bigger things to worry about right now, but that doesn’t mean the fear of being in trouble for not taking care of himself like he promised isn’t waiting to rear its head as soon as this job is done. 

Steve squeezes his arm, a silent promise that he’s not in trouble. Bucky manages a weak parody of a smile before they head inside. He doesn’t think he’s ever been less ready for something, but it’s happening whether he wants it or not.

Story of his life.

Visiting is for family only, of course, because Bucky famously has the best luck in the world. Steve promises to wait in the lobby, and persuades his boyfriend to keep his phone on in spite of the prominent signs instructing otherwise. If something happens, he’s not going to let a little thing like  _ rules  _ stop him from pulling Bucky out. 

Bucky has nine floors of elevator ride to work himself into a panic, but the fortunate emptiness of the elevator gives him an opportunity to pull out his flask and take a few sips to quell the rising anxiety. There was a time he would have taken the stairs to burn the extra calories, and he tries to comfort himself with the fact he’s still got his small victories of recovery to cling to. He tells himself to be resigned to this situation, to manufacture stoicism and get out as soon as he has the information his sister wants.

The studio and the documentary and the looming threat of engagement all feel very far away, in this steel cage rising inexorably towards doom. It’s almost comforting, a liminal space between nothing and everything, and Bucky kind of wants to stay there until the world just goes away. 

The doors open all too quickly, and he swallows heavily before checking the room number written on his hand. A familiar click of heels almost sends him scurrying back into the elevator, but the doors have already closed and he ducks around the nearest corner instead, heart beating loudly in his ears to drown out the tell-tale signs of his mother’s approach. 

Long moments pass like hours, and Bucky finally realises she’s waiting for the elevator when he hears her push the button irritably a few times, sighing when the thing doesn’t show up fast enough. He bides his time and waits for his opportunity, for the elevator to arrive and the doors to close and carry her away before he starts looking for his father’s room. 

He almost laughs at the bitter surreality of it all. Normal people don’t hide from their mother like she’s the boogeyman. If only Peggy and her camera could see him now.

Bucky finds his dad in a private room, of course, but good insurance can’t take away the smell of disinfectant and death that permeates the halls. He takes another furtive swig from his flask, not really giving a fuck if anyone sees him (although the hall is deserted so far, which doesn’t help his creeping sense of dread), to steel himself before opening the door. 

He fucking hates hospitals. Too many bad memories.

“James?"

Sitting propped up against his pillows and attached to a heart monitor, Jim Barnes looks vulnerable without his usual armour of tailored suits and an air of superiority. He looks like an old man, and Bucky’s stomach lurches uncomfortably at that thought for reasons he can’t fully explain. 

His dad is distant, sure, but he’s not  _ old _ . Surely not that much time has passed since he last saw his family? 

“Hi, Dad,” Bucky sticks his hands in his pockets, hovering near the door as if that small distance will keep him from being sucked back into his parents’ world. It takes all his willpower to not keep looking over his shoulder in case  _ she’s  _ behind him. “Becky asked me to find out if you were okay, so…”

Behind his glasses (Bucky’s never seen him wear them outside the house before, since concern about appearances runs through the whole family like poison), Jim’s face creases. Bucky stays frozen in place as his dad presses a hand over his mouth, stunned by the realisation that he’s actually seeing the man lose his composure. 

He’s never seen his father cry, not once in his life. It creates a sudden, sickly vertigo in his chest. This isn’t how they work. 

“It’s good to see you,” Jim chokes out after clearing his throat a few times, getting himself back together so he can maintain whatever composure he has left. Bucky swallows hard and moves a little closer, crossing the room to get a proper look at him. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Bucky nods, cautiously sinking into the flimsy plastic chair next to the bed. His mother hasn’t sat in it, he can be sure of that much. “What happened, Dad? Becky said you had a heart attack or something.”

Jim barks out a humourless laugh, to his surprise. Bucky digs his nails into his palms and waits, because he’s got no familiar ground to keep his footing here and this whole encounter feels like one long freefall.

“She would tell people that. Your mother, I mean. It wasn’t a heart attack, although I thought it was,” Jim pushes his glasses up his nose self-consciously, with an unsteady hand which does nothing to quell Bucky’s deep sense of unease. “They’re keeping an eye on me here, but the doctor is almost completely sure it was a… a psychological event.”

He shapes the words reluctantly, with the kind of distaste that makes Bucky think of rejected antidepressants and glasses smashed against the wall. It takes him a moment of blinking, adrift at sea, before he puts two and two together and looks at his dad in disbelief. 

“You had a panic attack?” It comes out more bewildered than he’d like, and Jim flinches slightly at having what he perceives as a weakness named aloud. Bucky doesn’t know how to react, a million responses tripping over themselves to be heard and none of them making it out in the process. 

This is the man who watched Bucky struggle through his childhood, an anxious kid who cried easily and was never tough enough. Told him to pull himself together and stop being so  _ sensitive _ , stop worrying about  _ nothing _ , stop being so  _ weak _ . Told him to just suck it up and bury his feelings down and for god’s sake be  _ normal _ . 

“That’s ironic,” is what finally comes out of his mouth, unemotional in a way Bucky’s sure should make him cringe. He has so many conflicting feelings that they’ve shut down, leaving him flat and glacial on the surface. Does that make him callous? Does he deserve to be?

“Son…” Jim reaches over and puts one unsteady hand over Bucky’s tightly clenched fist. Bucky fights the urge to be comforted by the touch, find solace in parental affection like a little boy - he doesn’t need that right now. “I’m so sorry for what we put you through.”

It should be exactly what he wants to hear, but all Bucky can think is that he’s going to throw up. 

“Until today, I didn’t… I thought I was dying, and if you felt like that every time…” he doesn’t elaborate. It’s hard to find the words after nearly thirty years of fuck ups, Bucky thinks, numbly. “I didn’t understand… I shouldn’t have been so hard on you. And your mother…”

“You’re the only punching bag left now, huh?” Bucky stands up, slipping out of his father’s reach so the old man’s hand hangs, reaching for nothing. “You could have listened to me when I  _ told  _ you what she was doing.”

“I didn’t realise it was true, James. You  _ did  _ have a tendency to overreact to things,” He’s so quick to snap, and Bucky just nods, jaw working hard as he fights to keep his emotions off his face. Of course, even in acknowledging his mistakes his dad still manages to put some of the blame on him. Of course. “I’m trying to make amends  _ now _ . Now I understand-”

“It’s too late for that, Dad,” it’s not as bad as talking back to Mama, but Bucky still feels nauseous at the look of righteous anger that flashes lighting-quick across his father’s face. He’s doing the  _ right thing _ , lowering himself to ask for his son’s forgiveness, so Bucky should accept the gesture and let it wipe the slate clean because of his dad’s  _ good intentions _ , right?

He doesn’t think he has any forgiveness left in him. Not for this. 

“I’ll tell Becky you’re okay. You should call her,” he cuts his dad off when he opens his mouth to say something else, make some comment about his ingratitude or another rehash of the thousands of belittling things he’s said over the years. It’s too ingrained for playing nice to erase it, even now. “Don’t fuck things up with her too.”

Bucky turns and leaves before his dad can say anything else, before the shaking can start. Processing the idea that his immovable father had a panic attack - actually knows some of how he feels - and finally acknowledged and apologised for his childhood, even if it wasn’t totally sincere, is - 

“I suppose you’ve come here to cause a scene.”

Bucky stops dead in his tracks, when a voice he only hears in his nightmares now becomes suddenly, confrontingly real. 

She’s standing between him and freedom, seeming smaller than he remembers her even in her high-heeled shoes and always immaculately swept-up hair. She always looms over him in his dreams, but maybe that says more about him than reality. Perhaps that physical difference is what stops him being totally trapped by the situation, as she starts to lay into him and Bucky, for once, doesn’t endure the lecture.

“How dare you upset your father in this state? Not everything needs to be about  _ you _ , James, you-” Irina is as cold and pointed as ever, but her composure falters when her son brushes past her without a word. “James, get back here!”

“Bye, Mama,” he shoots over his shoulder as he speeds up, sounding more confident than he feels. 

He has to duck into a bathroom as soon as he rounds the corner, locking himself in and crouching down beside a sink to hide and make himself as small as possible as he remembers how to breathe. 

He’s in trouble with her. He lets that fact run loose in his brain and create all the havoc it needs to. Worst case scenarios crash and burn through him, as his heart threatens to leap out of his throat and run away screaming. He’s in trouble, he’s in so much trouble, maybe more trouble than he’s ever been in in his life…

And so what? What are the consequences?

As he comes down from the panic, Bucky flexes the muscles of reason Clint has been helping him build during their sessions. He’s never going to be able to completely calm down while his family is in the same building, but going over the facts (he’s physically bigger and stronger than her now, he has the free will to leave, she can’t compel him to do anything) helps him gather the strength to get up off the floor and keep going. 

Waiting in the lobby, Steve takes one look at him and hustles him out of the building, arm around Bucky’s shoulders like it would take a hell of a fight to pry him away. He doesn’t stop until they’re across the parking lot, for which Bucky is more than grateful. He sits down on the low wall running around the edge of the lot and fumbles with his cigarettes, making a thankful noise when Steve lights one for him because his hand is shaking too hard to keep the lighter burning. 

They sit in silence for a minute, until Bucky lets out a strangled almost-laugh at the situation. 

“He had a fucking panic attack,” he explains in a croak, when Steve shoots him a familiar ‘you’re being crazy’ look. “He thought it was a heart attack, and now he  _ feels my pain  _ and shit. He told me to toughen up and stop being so  _ sensitive  _ for years, but now it’s happened to him,  _ now  _ he gets it.”

“That’s ironic,” Steve raises his eyebrows, not even trying to feign sympathy because he’s got exactly zero time for Bucky’s family’s bullshit. It’s comforting. 

“That’s what I said,” Bucky scrubs a hand over his eyes and lets out a long breath, most of his anxiety dispelled in the face of weariness. It’s getting easier to recover from these setbacks, sure, but he feels like he’s run a marathon afterwards. Steve keeps a steady hand on the small of his back, anchoring him to the here and now. “I need to let Becky know he’s alright.”

“Text her on the way,” Steve doesn’t press him about what else happened up there to make him look like he’d seen a ghost. He knows Bucky hates talking about his shitty past, especially when it’s shoved in his face like this, so he doesn’t push. "C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

“I’m just gonna go home and sleep,” Bucky sounds like shit, looks half dead, and Steve isn’t going to let that carry on anymore. Especially not after a day like this. “Are you gonna-”

“I'm gonna come home with you,” Steve pushes himself off the wall and offers Bucky his hand, not surprised when his boyfriend just looks at him warily. He can already see the cogs whirring in Bucky’s mind, going over his own behaviour in minute detail to see where he’s fucked up and made Steve think he can’t cope. 

Steve loves Bucky to death, but if he could drag his disorders out of his head and murder them with his bare hands, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

"You don't have to—"

"Yeah, I do," Steve doesn't look angry, which Bucky doesn't get because he's  _ ruining  _ things and getting in the way of what Steve really needs to do and – and Steve cuts his racing thoughts off before he can berate himself any more. "Stow the  _ I can do it all by myself  _ crap. You're not okay right now, are you?"

"I…" he swallows hard and clasps his hands together to try and hide the nervous tremor, wincing when he presses too hard on the fresh welts on his knuckles. He deflects the question, as usual. "Your mom…"

"Ma's tough as nails, she says she's sick of me hanging around because she can't have her boyfriend over in the middle of the day," Bucky looks up in disbelief at that, and Steve manages a conspiratorial smirk despite the concern digging lines around his eyes. "Buck, I can split my time, it doesn’t have to be either/or. Would it be easier if I was home?"

"I- I promised you I wasn't gonna—"

"Babe," Steve cuts him off again, gentling him like a spooked animal. Bucky remembers sitting on a wall together like this, the day they became a couple, and wonders if one day Steve won't have to gentle him like this. Or if he'll ever get sick of making the effort. "How bad is it?"

"It's not… I'm just stressed about work and it's…" he trails off and meets his boyfriend's eyes wearily, too tired to keep up the façade. "You’re right. I want you to come home."

"Okay," Steve nods, like it's just that easy. Bucky might be gaping a little, because Steve rolls his eyes and puts his arms around him, bodily lifting him off the wall and placing him on the ground like he's as light as he is slow on the uptake. "I forget sometimes I've gotta spell this shit out for you."

"Hey," Bucky’s cheeks flush when Steve lets him go, weirdly stung despite it being a light-hearted comment. "You were stressed and breaking down and I was just—"

"No, shit, that came out wrong. You let me take the time I needed with Ma, you did everything right," Steve reassures him quickly, seeing the crossed wire immediately. He's got good at spotting them since he started dating Bucky - or better, at least. "I just meant I forget that you won't ask for what you need, sometimes. I should've paid closer attention and checked in more."

"It's not your job to check on me," Bucky gives up his tight posture and slowly leans forward, resting his head on Steve's shoulder as if he's not entirely sure he's really there. It might take some work to close the gap that’s opened up between them, but they’re both ready to put in the hours.

"It kinda is. It's part of the whole loving someone deal, I think," Steve presses a kiss into his unruly hair and slings an arm around Bucky's shoulders, squeezing him tight enough to feel the newly-reappeared knobs of his spine before steering them both towards the subway. 

He thinks about the ring in his sock drawer and tells himself not yet. Not yet, but soon.  

"You eat yet?"

"Here we go…" Bucky sighs elaborately, having recovered enough composure to reboot his personality, and Steve pinches his ear in playful admonishment for the sass. Things aren’t fixed, not by a long shot, but they’re back in the fight together. Things aren’t better yet, but they’re getting there. 

Not yet, but soon.


	13. Don't Panic

Bucky is doing better.

He tells himself that almost as often as Steve does. He's eating breakfast, he's doing better. He's taking lunch to work, he's doing better. He's drinking less, he's doing better. He's keeping down his meals and keeping up his meds and he's doing so much _better_.

Like a mantra, he repeats it to himself in the hopes that it finally sticks. His brain says otherwise. It's the week before their car crash show launches, and he misses his eating disorder.

He's happy Steve is back in the apartment - no matter how long they've been together, he still can't quite believe it sometimes when he wakes up next to his boyfriend in the early-morning half light and he's _real_ and _there_ and he _stayed_ \- but it doesn't stop him being edgy without the familiar comforts of self-destruction. Bucky misses feeling light headed, misses the fogginess in his brain which meant he didn't have to think about anything too hard, misses the way the cold bit sharp into his bones which meant he was losing.

Winning and losing look the same to him when everything is a blur. He misses the blur. He's heartsick for the thing that was killing him.

Because the problem is, he is doing better. They make dinner together and Bucky doesn't fret as much over eating it, even if it sometimes takes everything in him not to purge. They watch Netflix or play videogames together and the empty evenings occupied by stress and the bottle are suddenly too full for much of either. They fuck, bicker, laugh, and it helps Bucky drag himself out of the pit he's been in.

He feels a whole lot more stable now Steve is home, like he can actually take on the challenge of the upcoming show and maybe-perhaps-possibly not crash and burn. It almost feels like maybe dancing isn't the most important thing in his life and that… that is a terrifying upset to the status quo. It's the complex terror of maybe not being as worthless and fucked up as he thinks he is. The fear of being something that can be loved just for being him.

Not that he's suddenly become a healthy, stable person, of course. That would just be too easy.

Bucky's phone says 2:15am when he wakes up gasping four days before the show premieres, yanking his hand away from his mouth in horror when he realises he's been anxiously chewing on his knuckles. He sits up gingerly, checking he hasn't woken Steve up as he swallows down a gag with practised disgust. It's been the same dream on repeat this week, the crushing fear he felt as a child when he realised he'd grown too big to fit in the hiding spot which kept him from his mother, and he knows there's no point in trying to go back to sleep.

He doesn't need a double feature to tell him to throw in the towel, what he does need is a drink to soothe him back to sleep.

But he's got his shitty coping mechanisms now, and a big lump of boyfriend in his bed, so he compromises. He pads quietly out of the bedroom, texting his sister as he goes to pour himself one - _one_ \- drink. It'll suck to have yet another sleepless night this close to the show opening, but he'd rather be tired than let Steve down again.

He's trying.

 

Steve finds him an hour later, smoking out on the fire escape.

He's been worried about Bucky since he moved back in - anyone with eyes would be. His boyfriend has a self-conscious tension to him that Steve remembers from the early days of their relationship, because Bucky might be a fantastic liar but Steve knows him like the inside of his own eyelids. The foreboding air of _trying_ all the time is hard to hide, even for a professional pretender.

Still, Bucky seems to be doing better since Steve came home - no binging, no purging, and he even seems happy, if stressed. Steve spends a couple of nights a week at his mom's place, but is making an effort to get back into normal life rather than hover over her like he can do something to help.

 _"I'm the one who's ill, Steven,"_ she'd told him gently, when he confided his worries about Bucky to her. _"There's no sense putting both our lives on hold."_

As usual, she was right. She seems to have perked up since she finished chemo, plus she keeps sending Bucky pictures she's surreptitiously snapped of her 'hunky' new nurse ("Can you please stop exchanging Thirsty Thursday pics with my Ma?!" "She started it!"), so he's fairly sure she's happy with his choices.

He wakes up to a cold bed and reluctantly drags himself out of it to check on his boyfriend, wincing at the frigid floor and thinking - as he always does first thing in the morning before promptly forgetting - that they need more rugs. Bucky has been having more trouble sleeping than usual lately, and although he always tells Steve he doesn't need to check up on him, it seems to help when he does. He'll stay up all night if left to his own devices, and Steve knows just how quickly sleep deprivation can make everything look shittier than it really is.

They've achieved some kind of balance right now, but experience tells him it wouldn't take much to tip it over again. He knows he's the ballast here, and he'll make sure the centre holds.

The living room is even colder than the bedroom, and Steve grabs his hoodie from the back of the couch and pulls it on before he can lose too much of his sleepy warmth. He picks up one of the throw blankets when he notices the open window, realising exactly where his boyfriend is with relief. Freezing his ass off is better than puking his guts out, at least.

Their lives are weird. Occasionally Steve becomes very aware of that.

"Hey," Bucky jumps a little when he announces himself, climbing awkwardly out of the window because his bulk doesn't fit through as easily as his tiny dancer friends do. Steve notes the ashtray and the nearly empty glass and resigns himself to the fact there's probably no point in trying to get Bucky back to bed by now. "Y'know, I appreciate you not smoking in the apartment, but I kinda need you to not freeze your nuts off."

"You'd miss them too much, huh?" the humour is a good sign, and Steve wraps the blanket around his boyfriend's shoulders (he's wearing a t-shirt and it's nearly December, Steve is officially dating a fucking idiot) before snaking his arms around his waist, hooking his chin over Bucky's shoulder and nuzzling into his chilly neck. "Just needed some air."

"You okay?" He kisses Bucky's neck when he nods, turning his head to blow smoke into the wind and away from Steve.

"Yeah. Just bad dreams. Becky's been sending me new pictures of Victor to take my mind off it," there's a smile in his voice as frozen fingers fumble with his phone to show off the new pictures of his nephew, and Steve comes down off high alert. If he's been talking to his sister, then Bucky's fine. She would have messaged Steve and woken him up if there was a problem, they make a good team when it comes to handling Bucky. "I can't believe she made something that cute."

"He's seriously adorable," Steve can't help but grin at the chubby baby, dark hair sticking up in all directions as he grins open-mouthed at the camera. For all Bucky grumbles about Loki and his sister being an item, they really did create a beautiful kid together. "You ever think about having one of those one day?"

He feels the moment Bucky registers the question, blurted out without thinking, and goes tense under his hands. Sometimes it seems like he's an anxiety bomb permanently waiting to go off.

"I dunno if you've noticed, but I ain't exactly got the equipment," the quip sounds totally normal, enough that Steve snorts and lightly headbutts Bucky's jaw in admonishment. Perhaps he's just reading into what might be an instinctive response without much behind it.

"I mean adopting or whatever. You ever think about it, like, in the future?" He's aware that this might be thin ice for how stressed his boyfriend is at the moment, but Steve broaches the topic anyway because he's never been a 'letting things go' kind of guy.

And, well, there is that ring in his sock drawer. Perhaps 'soon' is creeping up faster than he'd expected.

"I mean…" Bucky, to his credit and much to Steve's surprise, actually considers the question instead of running away from the conversation. "I always kinda thought I'd be a shitty parent, to be honest. I can barely take care of myself."

"You're good with kids," Steve points out, squeezing Bucky's waist to let him know he sees the effort he's making. "And you have your shit more together than you think, remember."

"Yeah, well," he definitely regrets telling Steve what his therapist said, but Steve's proud of him anyway. Bucky shifts in his arms and lets himself relax back against Steve a little now he's starting to warm up. He's still not running, Steve can't believe it. "I'd be afraid of turning into my Mom, I think."

"You wouldn't," he promises, pressing another kiss to his boyfriend's neck. "Not in a million years."

A comfortable silence settles between them as Bucky lets that sink in, the trickle of drunken partiers starting to make their way home from the clubs on the street below preventing the silence from actually being quiet. They don't do this normally - they've had plenty of late night/early morning conversations on the fire escape, but they don't talk about the future. It's been hard enough to live in the present lately, so the future has taken a back seat in favour of getting through the day to day.

As Bucky hesitantly breaks the silence, Steve wonders if it's finally time to look forward together.

"You… You ever think about that stuff?"

 

Bucky is definitely freaking out.

Or rather, he's freaking out that he's not freaking out. And also kind of freaking out at the same time. It's a mess.

What he should be doing, if his lifetime of scraping by and keeping himself just about breathing has taught him anything, is bailing the hell out of this conversation. He's woken up from a nightmare, he hasn't had enough to drink, he's wandered into contemplating The Capital-F Future by accident. The absolute last thing he should be doing is talking about hypothetical parenthood with his fucking boyfriend.

And yet, here he is actively engaging with the conversation and prolonging it rather than changing the subject at the speed of light. At least he's going to have plenty to talk about at his next therapy session.

"I guess so. I've always vaguely wanted kids, but I never thought about it too hard," Steve is saying, sounding thoughtful as Bucky blinks rapidly and tries to get his brain out of its spiral of 'why am I not freaking out I should be freaking out'. "It's not a dealbreaker for me, though."

"You just saying that because you don't wanna spook me?" Somewhere in his closed feedback loop of (not) panicking, Bucky actually feels oddly calm. It's only Steve, after all. He can still say the wrong thing, but Steve will forgive him for it. Probably.

He stubs his cigarette out, staying where he is with Steve pressed to his back and not turning to look at his boyfriend. The last dying wisps of smoke curl away into the frosty night and Bucky wonders what the hell he'd even do with a kid. He hopes Steve isn't exaggerating about it not being a dealbreaker, because-

It hits him like a brick.

Because he wants Steve around forever. Shit.

"Nah, I'm saying it because I'd rather have you than a kid," a similar sort of revelation seems to hit Steve at the same time as Bucky, and he backs up a little so he can slowly turn his boyfriend around to face him.

Bucky wonders if he looks as terrified as he feels. It's not a familiar terror, not the old wound of adrenaline and fight or fight and panicked nausea in the back of his throat. This is the terror of seeing something which shouldn't be possible, but is.

The wind bites as it blows a strand of hair across his cheek, and Steve reaches up to tuck it carefully behind his ear. He looks different in the dark, sleep crumpled and handsome, the bump on his nose from frequent past breaks casting a shadow in the half-light that emphasises the mess of his bedhead. He looks tired, and there's lingering worry etched in the tiny lines around his eyes, but there's happiness there too.

He looks like home.

"Don't freak out," Steve has his hands on his shoulders, squeezing like he's secretly as surprised as Bucky is about this whole thing. Bucky nods slightly, mouth dry as he swallows and wishes his drink wasn't empty.

"I'm not freaking out," he's definitely freaking out. "You're freaking out."

"Buck," Steve cuts him off, a smile twisting at the corner of his mouth in spite of his earnestness. Bucky knows about the ring in his sock drawer, so he knows this can't be a complete shock to Steve, but something has definitely shifted for him too. "If you don't wanna have kids, then I'm with you a hundred percent. And if you do wanna have kids one day, then I'm ready for that ride too. As long as it's with you."

"Steve…"

"I'm with you, okay? Nightmares and relapses and whatever. 'Til the track runs out, end of the line," his hands are unsteady now on Bucky's shoulders and, hell. This is totally not how Bucky was expecting this conversation to pan out. He doesn't hate it. "I missed you when I was gone, and it made me realise I never want to do that again. Ever."

"You asking me something, Stevie?" His voice is about as steady as Steve's hands, but Bucky's chest feels oddly still. He can't put a label on what he's feeling, but he doesn't think it's panic - he doesn't want to run from this, from them.

"I'm just telling you what I need you to know," he cups Bucky's cheek and looks him in the eye, totally unashamed of the fact he's emotionally compromised in a way Bucky has always admired. Growing up loved has left Steve so ready to love that he shines with it. "And I need you to know I'm not gonna make you decide anything until you're ready. Promise."

Bucky kisses him, then. Wrapped up in his blanket cape and his boyfriend's arms, tasting of cigarettes and cheap whisky and the dying dregs of his latest nightmare, he's the lightest he's felt in months. He's home.

"You pick your fucking moments," he pulls back and blinks, clearing his throat because he's definitely not reached Steve-levels of emotional openness. The soft look on Steve's face says that's just fine, which doesn't help Bucky's lack of composure. "C'mon, let's go get warmed up."

He grabs Steve's hand to tug him back through the window, tossing his phone through first so it lands safely on the couch. He's already ignored Peggy's message about setting up another interview, and by tomorrow morning he will have forgotten about it entirely. It will have knock-on effects later, but that's not his priority right now. He's got everything he needs right here, all six foot two inches of him.

"You mean warmed up like, warmed up or like _warmed up_?" Steve manages to go from heartrendingly romantic to class-A dork in under ten seconds, wiggling his eyebrows for emphasis. Bucky could not love him more.

"Whichever one of those involves your dick," he rolls his eyes, discarding the blanket and dragging Steve to the bedroom. "You did declare undying love to me, so I guess I'd better suck you off, or whatever."

"You're the least romantic asshole, oh my god. I bare my soul to you and this is what I get," Steve is grinning as he says it though, which drags the kind of soft, genuine smile out of Bucky that's very unlike his usual persona.

He's starting to know, rather than just hope, it's okay to show Steve his real face.

"Are you complaining about blowjobs?" Bucky pulls himself together enough to raise an eyebrow and plaster a mischievous look on his face, only slightly anxious that Steve has seen so much of his soft underbelly tonight. "This is turning into a trend."

"You wanna shut up and suck my cock?" Steve flops down onto the bed, taking Bucky with him. Perhaps getting him back to bed wasn't impossible after all.

"And I'm the least romantic one…"

Steve shuts him up and smothers his laughter with a kiss. Bucky isn't complaining.

 

"I'd say yes. I think. If you were asking me something," he says it quietly, later, when they're curled up together and drifting back to sleep as the clock ticks closer to having to get up from another night spent anywhere but bed. "I wasn't sure if I would, because I dunno why the fuck anyone would want to keep me around like that. But… I think I'd say yes, if you asked."

Bucky's heart is in his throat as he forms the words, forces them out past the lump in his throat. For once in his life, he doesn't feel sick.

"I know," Steve replies sleepily, nuzzling into his boyfriend's unruly hair. "S'why I'm not asking yet. You've got enough to freak out about right now."

"Doesn't bother you that I'm gonna freak out about it?" He asks softly, showing off that pale underbelly again because he knows Steve won't bite.

"Babe, you freak out about toast," Steve murmurs, halfway to sleep as he huffs a soft sigh against Bucky's ear. "I'd be more worried if you didn't."

"Oh. Huh," Bucky turns that over in his mind, as he finally understands that Steve gets him and loves him, not in ignorance but understanding of his flaws, in a way he'd thought was impossible.

Maybe he's not a destructive virus to be inflicted on the people misguided enough to give a shit about him. Maybe he can be… loved.

He's out within the minute, knocked out and dreamless in a way he hasn't been since exhaustion left him unconscious in the wake of an excruciating dinner with his family. This isn't the desperate unconsciousness of escape, though, but the first tentative contentedness of a man who's never known content.

Bucky is fucked up and under enough pressure to crack him to the foundations but tonight, in spite of everything, he's happy.


	14. two inches from triumph

The day the show premieres, they wake up to snow.

"God dammit," Bucky mutters to himself, mug of green tea clutched tightly in his freezing fingers as he glowers out of the window at the fat, pillowy flakes whipping through the air. He'd rather drink coffee, but he's developed a taste for having it with sugar and the fifteen extra calories are definitely not in his budget today. "This better not affect our turnout." 

"It won't," Steve calls over his shoulder cheerily, somehow aware of the grumpy muttering in spite of his current predicament - turning the apartment upside down to find a fucking harmonica, of all things. Session work is unpredictable, and he sometimes misses the steady rhythm of working at the same company every day… although he wouldn't go back to the drama for all the money in the world.

"Yeah. Stark'll get snow ploughs out if he has to, the critics are getting in one way or another," he's still grumbling, but Bucky looks over his shoulder in amusement when Steve locates his harmonica (secreted behind the Xbox, somehow) with a triumphant noise. "What the fuck are you even recording today?"

"Commercial. I think it's deodorant? Or like, maybe chips?" He hauls himself off the floor before Bucky can mock him for 'deodorant or maybe chips', as he's absolutely about to, and pulls his boyfriend into a bear hug tight enough to make him squeak. "It's gonna be fine today. You're gonna be awesome."

"I hope so," Bucky holds his mug out of the way of his extra snuggly boyfriend and hugs Steve back with his other arm, cataloguing the pull in his muscles from his morning stretches with the vague anxiety of something being wrong on opening night he always gets. Nothing is, of course, but the worry never fully abates regardless. "You still gonna be able to make it?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Steve presses a lingering kiss to Bucky's temple and then pulls back with a smirk. "Not 'cause of you, Sam threatened to break my legs if I didn't come see him."

"You're such a jerk," it's dumb, but the ribbing helps Bucky almost feel like this is just another day - like he isn't going to be judged by an audience at the end of it. 

It's quite possibly the calmest build up to a show Bucky's ever had. He hasn't purged for almost a month now (a personal record outside of the white-knuckle aftermath of treatment), and he feels relatively clear headed as he walks to the studio, bundled up in his biggest coat against the snow. The ice-cold air makes it easier to get his breakfast protein shake down as he goes - the texture is still a struggle, but the temperature keeps it tolerable - and by the time he gets to his office he's full of calories and ready to take care of business here before going over to the theatre. 

The good feeling doesn't last long. Sometimes he wonders if there'll ever be a day it does. 

First up is a memo informing him the entire first two rows tonight will be made up of critics - something Coulson sounds  _ very  _ pleased about - which doesn't have a positive impact on his 'pretending he's not going to spend the evening being judged' thing. Second is a text from his sister, letting him know she's bringing their dad to the show tonight rather than her partner. It's not like the old man hasn't been trying to worm his way back into Bucky's life since the hospital, but he really doesn't need this bullshit when he's already stressed. 

He texts Becky back a middle finger emoji and puts his phone on silent. His family are all self-absorbed as fuck, why shouldn't he embrace that today?

Third in the trifecta of testing his coping mechanisms to the limit is a last-minute costume fitting. Their outfits are constantly tweaked throughout the production's run - being that they have to function as both heavy-duty sports gear and also impractical spangly character pieces - and Bucky has been too busy with rehearsal and fighting to be involved in the business side of the company to have his measurements taken for the last couple of weeks… maybe the last three weeks, if he's being honest. 

Darcy, recent intern in the costume department who's about twelve years old and appropriately obnoxious with it, corners him with her tape measure in his office, just after Bucky's choked down a cereal bar to try and stave off his headache after wading through another pile of emails trying to blag free tickets to opening night. He resists the instinct to escape to the bathroom and purge and instead resigns himself to the inevitable and reluctantly removes his shirt. It's better than last time, he reminds himself as sternly as he's able - at least he isn't going to be half naked on stage tonight.

It would have been doable, he would have been able to take the anxiety and just not look at the measurements and maybe have a stiff drink to steady himself afterwards, if Peggy hadn't barged into the office at that vulnerable moment. Thor shoots Bucky an apologetic look, clearly having tried and failed to stop Hurricane Carter, and closes the door behind her to at least prevent anyone else from gawping at this particular sideshow. Bucky likes Thor a hell of a lot, some days.

"I've been trying to arrange an interview with you for ages," Peggy looks pissed, and Bucky immediately tenses up because for all his progress, he still can't handle people being disappointed in him. "Are you purposefully avoiding me?"

"No," Bucky really wishes they weren't doing this right now. Not when he's shirtless and being fucking  _ measured _ , of all things. "Things are super hectic before we premiere, that's all."

He resists the urge to fold his arms and attempt to cover himself somehow, as Peggy isn't all that subtle about looking him over while Darcy passes the measuring tape around his waist. It's bad enough that he's got his strange, wiry muscle on display (he knows he should be less self-conscious about this, he's been half naked in front of strangers since he was a kid, but he's still acutely aware that his body is a working dancer's shape and looks  _ weird  _ compared to gym muscles or natural thinness), and the still-bright scars from his accident and the shitty faded tattoo he got as a teenager don't help him feel like less of a freak show. 

"Seriously?" Darcy whips the tape measure off and shakes her head incredulously, making a note on his costume sheet with a quiet  _ tsk _ . "You put on weight right before opening?  _ You _ ?"

And just like that, the bottom drops out of Bucky's fragile equilibrium. 

"I… did?" He tries very hard not to react, hyper-aware that Peggy is still watching him with a journalist's penetrating gaze. He knows he's the topic of speculation and gossip in the dance world, was even before that fucking video went viral, and Peggy will definitely have heard the rumours - drugs, eating disorders, whatever is slightly too close to the truth for comfort this week. 

If he reacts and she sees it, he's fucked. 

"You're up two inches here. I thought I could rely on you, man," Bucky knows Darcy's joking - she has an acerbic sense of humour and is new at the company so hasn't developed any qualms about pissing people off yet - but that doesn't stop his instinct to curl up very small somewhere and hide.

He used to be small. God, it's been so long since he was small.

"Look, I'm busy D. Can you fuck off, maybe?" Luckily the bluntness goes both ways between them, so Bucky can disguise his genuine annoyance and panic beneath being flippant. Darcy doesn't know him well enough to know any better, so she collects her stuff and flounces off downstairs with an exaggerated melodrama which tells him he hasn't pissed her off. He hasn't pissed  _ someone _ off, at least. 

Still, Bucky has his shirt back on before she's even fully out of the room. He doesn't even care if Peggy sees him scramble at this point - he's starting to sweat and his hands are beginning to shake, and the crushing feeling of impending doom is starting to crawl up from under the fat between his ribs. If he has a panic attack in front of her he's going to jump out of a fucking window. 

"Are you… alright?" Some of the heat has gone out of Peggy's voice as she watches Bucky fumble to pull his hoodie back on and hide as much of himself as he can, as fast as he can. Perhaps he could pass the shivering off as it being cold in here, but none of this is good. He can't allow himself to be vulnerable right now, not when he's too cloudy to see where the lines are.

"Yeah. Show day, y'know?" He waves a hand dismissively, like he can erase the topic of conversation and suck the atmosphere out of the air. Somehow, Peggy sounding concerned is much worse than her being irritated. "I'm sorry I haven't been more, uh, available. We can get something on the books next week?"

Two inches. 

He's trying to negotiate with a person who could blow his entire life open if he makes a wrong move and Bucky can think about is the fact he's put on  _ two inches  _ around his waist without even noticing. He tries to remember the body visualisation exercises from treatment, the horrible time he had to draw an outline of what he thought his body looked like on a piece of paper and then lie down on it so someone could trace his true shape, and convince himself all over again that the way he sees two inches isn't the way the rest of the world sees two inches. 

It doesn't help. Two inches could be the Grand Canyon right now, for all the difference it makes in his head.

"That would be great," Peggy has a weird expression on her face that Bucky can't quite read now, caught somewhere between concern and understanding, and he desperately needs this conversation to be over so he can eat something and bring it back up before he spirals completely. 

There's an odd moment of clarity in there, somehow, as he really feels for a moment how exhausted he is with the cycle of it all. Bucky doesn't  _ want  _ to bolt down his lunch and then stick his fingers down his throat until his head is quiet, but in this moment it feels inevitable… and he suddenly realises that certainty is no longer as comforting as it used to be. 

Maybe he should get back into treatment after this show's run is up, a small voice in his mind suggests, tentatively. Just for a little while. 

"If you talk to Thor he'll schedule you in. It'll be Monday or Tuesday, I promise," Bucky swallows thickly when Peggy lingers, like she wants to say something else but hasn't quite decided how to spit it out. "Is there something else, or…?"

"I had body image issues as a teenager, you know," she says thoughtfully, quietly, like she's finally sussed him out. Bucky can feel the moment his face blanches, suddenly cold as all the colour drains out of him and his heart rate picks up loud enough to drown out any ambient noise from the hallway. 

The horrible, sickly  _ shame  _ of being found out punches him in the stomach hard enough to bruise. If he wasn't sitting down already, he'd have to. 

"Uh…" he croaks out, voice cracking as he does a shit job of sounding anything but completely rattled. So much for keeping his shit together and under the radar. Peggy, however, miraculously doesn't call him on his deer in the headlights look. 

"I just wanted to let you know we won't be taking footage of anyone changing backstage tonight," they have the right to, Bucky knows they have the waivers signed and sealed, and somehow the knowledge that this is a kindness, that she's consciously choosing to ease his anxiety this way, helps his heart slow down. "Just so you know. In case it helps to make anyone more comfortable."

Bucky sees the graciously offered way out with 'anyone' and clings to it with both hands. He's starting to like Peggy, much as he tries to keep in mind that she's here for her story, not for him.

"Thanks. I'm sure a lot of us will appreciate it," the words feel stilted and his smile feels skinless and false, when he forces it out, but Peggy seems to understand. He's not sure if that's good or bad. 

She throws a 'good luck' over her shoulder as she leaves, thankfully shutting the door as Bucky immediately drops his head into his hands and tries to control the panicky breathing which overtakes him the moment he's not being observed. He's  _ this _ close to his world crashing down around his ears and he's  _ still  _ thinking about two inches more than anything else. 

Sometimes Bucky feels legitimately crazy. This is one of those times.

There isn't really time to panic right now, not when he has to be at the theatre for a final rehearsal soon and promised to eat lunch with Pietro before that (and still has to check in with Sam about the ridiculously risky shit they're going to pull tonight, which he's been putting out of his mind as much as possible because  _ that  _ could be a real career-ender if his own fucked up brain doesn't get to him first), so Bucky needs to calm down fast. It's still snowing outside, coming down harder now, and he makes himself watch the drifting flakes outside the window, picking out patterns until his lungs remember how to work again. 

There's a text from Steve on his phone, when he checks (along with several from his sister that he's not even going to read right now), and Bucky actually chokes out a surprised laugh despite how shitty he's feeling when he reads it. 

_ Stop panicking. You're awesome and I love you. Calm the fuck down, it's gonna be fine. _

Just like that, the edge is gone from his near-panic and things dial down just enough for his rational brain to kick back into gear.

_ How did you know i was panicking? I might be super calm smh _

Bucky's packing up his shit to head to the theatre when he gets a reply. It's only after he reads it that he realises the urge to binge and purge has mostly passed without him giving in… which is a small victory, sure, but he'll take whatever he can get on a day like this. 

_ Water is wet, bears shit on the pope, BB is a sexy ball of nerves. I'm smart af. _

Someone has put the  _ Hamilton  _ soundtrack on over the house speakers when Bucky gets to the theatre, shaking snow out of his hair despite his hood because it's starting to come down like a blizzard out there. He's feeling settled enough in his skin to provide an extremely flamboyant John Laurens to Sam's red-hot Hamilton (Pietro's Lafayette is terrible for all the right reasons, while Nat's Hercules Mulligan has to be seen to be believed), as they mess around on the stage and collectively try not to think about the night ahead. 

Maria soon sends them scurrying off backstage to  _ behave  _ for once (though not without first making a brief cameo for George Washington's dramatic entrance because - let's face it - they're all dumb theatre kids who are just barely grown up), and Bucky, Sam, Nat, Pietro, and Kamala cram themselves into the tiny men's dressing room to eat lunch in peace before the final run-though. Bucky and Pietro sit with their knees pressing together in the small space, both of them struggling for different reasons (Bucky's two inches, Pietro's concern over how Wanda is going to handle sitting in a crowd of people even with Maya to help). With enough silent chiding and pointed looks they each manage to get a decent amount of food down, and Pietro doesn't say anything but sticks to Bucky like glue until he figures enough time has elapsed after eating that the urge to purge has passed. 

They have an odd, broken little friendship, but Bucky genuinely loves the kid in a way he doesn't hold affection for anyone else. He's never had a younger sibling, but he supposes their exasperated concern mirrors his and Becky's relationship to a certain extent. 

Not that he's acknowledging her texts, still, because she's a traitor and she deserves to stew for a while. He said they had affection for each other, not that their relationship was  _ functional _ .

Sam corners him and pulls him out into the hall as the group breaks up to get changed for the final dress rehearsal. It's possibly the first time Bucky's seen his friend look genuinely nervous, and he finds it easier than usual to stow his own shit and worry about Sam for a minute. Hopefully it's the start of a trend. 

"You sure about doing this tonight?" Sam is already starting to sweat, and Bucky's suddenly glad he hasn't leaned on any substances or clouded his head with purging, because he needs to be the strong one here. They're about to be openly defiant of what the business side of the company wants, and shit is definitely going to hit the fan after. "It's opening, man. Your big comeback, the critics are in… I don't know…"

"We're not doing anything a thousand productions haven't done before," Bucky reassures him, only slightly trying to convince himself as well as Sam. If Stark and Coulson hadn't been such assholes and had actually listened to him throughout planning this shitshow then perhaps he'd feel bad about it, but then when did feeling bad ever get him anywhere? "I will absolutely twist my own ankle if we need an excuse, dude. None of the blame is gonna land on you, I promise. You deserve this."

"Don't say that," Sam scrubs a hand over his face, and Bucky is uncomfortably reminded of the guilt his friend still carries after what happened last time they performed together and he got hurt. He puts a supportive hand on Sam's arm and waits until his friend blows out a long, anxious breath before nodding. Sometimes, space and a little understanding are all you need. "Okay, yeah, let's do it."

"You're good?"

"I'm good," Sam nods again, squeezing back tightly when Bucky pulls him into a much-needed hug. They've both been inside of the studio system for most of their professional lives (most of his life, period, on Bucky's part), and going against what they're told to do doesn't come naturally to either of them. 

But - as Bucky had rambled, slightly drunk at the bar on the night he floated the idea with Sam for the first time - good little soldiers can't stay good little soldiers forever. 

The night is only beginning, as they slip back into the dressing room to get ready. Bucky examines his costume and its two extra inches for a while before he pulls it on, back to the wall and facing the closed door in case Peggy was lying about her lurking camera and its intentions. The two inches don't feel quite as much like the Grand Canyon once they're against his skin, itchy seams irritating the way they always are, even when they're smaller. There's a metaphor there somewhere, he supposes, but he doesn't have time to think about it now. 

It's still snowing outside, Bucky notices, as they leave the frigid basement dressing rooms and assemble backstage to wait for the rehearsal to begin. He sidles over to a window and watches the feathery flakes fall, blanketing the surrounding buildings and sidewalk and giving the world around their sparkly, bright bubble an uncanny silence. A snowglobe of calm right before a storm.

Whether the silence is threatening or promising, Bucky realises in that moment (far too late in life, but not so late it doesn't matter), is up to him to decide. 

He takes a deep breath in, lets it out, and makes his choice as the music begins.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought!


End file.
